New Arenas in the KHL-VHL-MHL Part II

Urbanskog

Platinum Member
Feb 8, 2014
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765
Helsinki
SKA is such a great brand with a good following that I wish they'd go truly overboard with the capacity, something like 25-30k. 20k is decent though.
 

Exarz

Registered User
Jan 1, 2014
2,415
339
Helsinki
The KHL should have arenaes for 18000 or more in the future.
Watching WC now and seeing 18.500 fans in the arena in Germany its amazing but its also a reminder that the second best leauge in the world should also have NHL arenaes

Its about monye but Putin will work this out

18k is unnecessary, however the long term goal is to have 12k arenas.
 

Alessandro Seren Rosso

Registered User
Jun 21, 2004
5,777
213
Europe
thehockeywriters.com
18k is unnecessary, however the long term goal is to have 12k arenas.

I don't agree. I think the minimum aim should be 15K. Minsk fills it. Peter can fill even more. Jokerit has a good following too, I can see them filling a 15-18K in a deep playoff run. Same for Slovan.
Moscow is Moscow, but good games in good arenas get excellent attendance, just have a look at the Channel One cup attendance. Other teams can get maybe not such results, but similar results with some work (and some luck with economy of course, which now is lacking). Kazan for example, is a good-working city, in one of the Russia's best regions. If the Russian economy will rebound, and one day will rebound, Kazan can have one of the best fanbases in Russia. Novosibirsk too, especially if they'll get the new promised arena.
Unfortunately the economy now is in bad shape, and the good flow of resources Russia had in the Olympics was poured into WC. New Russian stadiums - whatever the inner "press" says - are very good.
 

IamherefortheFinn

ObsessedWithTheLion
May 24, 2015
423
15
Trio Areena
SKA is such a great brand with a good following that I wish they'd go truly overboard with the capacity, something like 25-30k. 20k is decent though.

With 25-30k there would be a lot of seat were you can't really see that well what's going on on the ice. In the important games people would still come for the atmosphere, but for most games those seat would be empty because of the not so spectacular viewing experience.
 

hansomreiste

Registered User
Sep 23, 2015
1,625
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Ankara
25-30K is just insane. No need for that ever in hockey. Just go play a Winter Classic at a football stadium if you want to have over 15K fans - I'm absolutely sure that you could do this in Russian winter. Bottom half teams will almost never go above 7K so not much work to do for them. Most top half teams already have decent arenas. Novosibirsk is probably the only city that absolutely needs a bigger one which it can regularly fill. Other than that, who needs 15K-seater arenas? It could be nice to have but is not and must not be a priority for KHL at this stage.

If SKA and CSKA keeps raiding other teams, maybe the current arenas will look quite big in a few years. KHL started as a very good and competitive league but now the way it is going is not quite promising.
 

hockeyMB89

Registered User
May 26, 2015
63
0
Krakow
Arena Riga got an upgrade.


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rtu-studenti-gavile-arena-riga-notiek-verienigakais-izlaidums-latvijas-vesture-59563a4919380.jpg
 

Alessandro Seren Rosso

Registered User
Jun 21, 2004
5,777
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Europe
thehockeywriters.com
Today on the Russian press appeared some insights about new Novosibirsk arena, nothing too fancy, though, just mostly that the financing will be from the region budget and that it will be on the left bank of the river, and a metro station and new roads will be added. I'm sure that these things are long known, however. No details on the number of seats, hopefully it will be at the very least 12K, more hopefully even 15-16
 

vorky

@vorkywh24
Jan 23, 2010
11,404
1,269
Creating arenas with 12K seats is repeating the same error was done in making arenas with 7k in 10 years ago arenas wave
I have the same opinion. Arenas should be at least 15k. I guess all this "12k idea" has roots here (page 53)

1. Проект нового Спортсооружения, планируемого для проведения Матчей Чемпионата, кроме упомянутых выше требований Технического регламента КХЛ, должен предусматривать следующее:

1.1. Количество индивидуальных зрительских мест – не менее 12 000 в городах с населением более 500 000 человек. Для городов с населением до 500 000 человек количество инди- видуальных зрительских мест – не менее 9 000. Для городов, в которых базируются два и более Клуба, участвующих в Чемпионате КХЛ, количество индивидуальных зрительских мест – не менее 9 000;

There should be a rule that a city above 1 million inhabitants need at least 15k arena.
 

Albatros

Registered User
Aug 19, 2017
12,276
7,723
Ostsee
I'm not sure, these teams would have to double or triple their attendances. Maybe in a couple of top games they could fill 15.000, but 28 times it doesn't seem realistic. Even in football with 15 home games only a few teams manage that. And with mostly empty arenas the optics get pretty bad, the atmosphere and ultimately the product less attractive.
 

SoundAndFury

Registered User
May 28, 2012
11,309
5,283
Well Barys built a new arena and it's rarely half-full.. So arenas alone solve nothing. Sure, untapped potential is there but the only team which really needs a new arena is Sibir.
 
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Alessandro Seren Rosso

Registered User
Jun 21, 2004
5,777
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Europe
thehockeywriters.com
Well Barys built a new arena and it's rarely half-full.. So arenas alone solve nothing. Sure, untapped potential is there but the only team which really needs a new arena is Sibir.

In Russia and post soviet countries I would also argue that results usually count more than in other countries, like it or not. And the KHL teams need to start work differently. Well, some of them work well, some other not so much, other teams don't work at all. So, getting a good marketing plan, involving the different actors in your city/oblast, should be much easier than getting a competitive team...
Hopefully this will come with years as teams gradually decrease direct state budget spending
 

Rigafan

Registered User
Jul 28, 2016
902
195
Europe
I'm not sure, these teams would have to double or triple their attendances. Maybe in a couple of top games they could fill 15.000, but 28 times it doesn't seem realistic. Even in football with 15 home games only a few teams manage that. And with mostly empty arenas the optics get pretty bad, the atmosphere and ultimately the product less attractive.

Russian soccer isn't great standard, where as hockey is!

Plus who wants to stand outside in -20 weather watching something so boring? Unless you're at a Bandy game there is no point.
 

hansomreiste

Registered User
Sep 23, 2015
1,625
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Ankara
Guys, are you serious? In most cities, even 15K is way ambitious. It makes absolutely zero sense to have a huge arena with 20,000 seats for a hockey game in Russia. Potentially; only Helsinki, Moscow and St. Petersburg could get over %75 attendance throughout the season and this is the best case scenario. For hockey, anything over 10K is perfectly more than enough for KHL. Except for the ones in NHL, only one or two teams can regularly fill an arena that has a capacity over 10K.

Not even in St. Petersburg will people fill a 20K-seater arena regularly to watch Avtomobilist, Vityaz or even Ak Bars. You don't build such a huge place only for a couple of games a year.

Russian soccer isn't great standard, where as hockey is!

Plus who wants to stand outside in -20 weather watching something so boring? Unless you're at a Bandy game there is no point.

I beg to differ. For every one guy who likes hockey, you can find ten following football. For you, it might be boring but the rest of the world thinks otherwise. Moreover, there are more games in hockey so it is not accurate to compare attendances. It's not only a matter of money but time: even a very rich person who's in love with hockey may find it very difficult to attend three home games in a week in hockey, while in football you just have two or three games a month for most of the time.

In Russia, we can see 20K+ arenas maybe only in Moscow and St. Petersburg which will probably not even host KHL games regularly - only the most important ones. Other than that, this is just a fantasy. Ufa, Kazan, Omsk etc. doesn't need anything new. 1o to 12K is good enough for Magnitogorsk, Novosibirsk and many other cities. Some people terribly overestimate the importance of having a brand new arena. As highlighted by another user, we've already seen that it doesn't change much, in Astana. People won't suddenly show up in a building just because it looks nicer. Attendance increase solely because of the infrastructure may be at around %10 and not higher. It also has to be kept in mind that only a handful of teams in KHL are consistently decent. Good luck filling a 15K seater in Vladivostok or Magnitogorsk when they win only once in five games.
 

Acallabeth

Heart ablaze
Jul 30, 2011
9,936
1,233
Moscow
Yes. In Novosibirsk and Ekaterinburg there is a huge potential for having attendance not worse than SKA. Even CSKA with a good arena in a better place would be able to get an attendance not inferior to Dynamo or Spartak
Novosibirsk and YeKG may be realistic, but excuses for CSKA have really become laughable. They have 3 metro stations really close to the arena, yes, it's pretty old, but if you can't even fill a 5600 seater in playoffs with a dominant team, why do you need a 15-thousand arena? We've seen Novokuznetsk selling their old stadium out when the MHL team was competing for medals, and potential like that is typical for most "peripheral" cities. However, I have already shown the evidence that building a new arena itself bring the attendance up by 25-30% at best (10% is a bit too conservative @hansomreiste ).

Buidling 15k+ stadiums for teams that cant draw half that number of fans is just bad business. Hockey stadiums are expensive: a new arena in Yekateriburg is estimated at $175M, Platinum Arena in Krasnoyarsk - at $67M, and I'm not even counting mantainance costs. So building a 15k-seater in Moscow will cost at least $300M. I'm not even pointing out that it will be nearly impossible to even make that profitable, it will also stand half empty all the time, aside from maybe a coupla times a year. We're finishing the 10th season of the KHL, and the attendance has grown by approximately a thousand, with the most attended club's popularity fluctuating around 11-14k. There's no need for huge arenas, not yet. You'll see it soon when giant football stadiums for the World Cup stand half empty after the tournament.
 

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