Why isn't norway good at hockey?

[SotasicA]

Too busy cross country skiing.

Plus they can do basic math.

If they handed out 97 medals for hockey maybe they would invest more in the sport.

I think you get 46 medals for hockey. 23 for men, 23 for women.

(If you want to count the actual hardware brought home in weight, not in number of events won.)

 

[Havre]

Its fun.. But lets be real here.

Still more popular than ice hockey in large parts of Europe - for men. About 1000x more popular among women.

Without knowing I guess hockey is bigger in Sweden (not even sure if that is true as handball is big there), Finland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Russia. Could also be in the UK as they don’t care about either sport. That is for men.

So yeah. Let’s be real.

Not to mention handball have been successful at expanding the sport over the last 10-20 years. There are now good African and Southern American teams. South Korea used to be really good etc.

 

[DenisSamson3]

I notice some have mentioned lack of ice rinks.

The Czechs in 1998 won the best on best Olympics with 9 ice rinks in their country at the time.

 

[Havre]

I notice some have mentioned lack of ice rinks.

The Czechs in 1998 won the best on best Olympics with 9 ice rinks in their country at the time.

Don’t know how it was 20 years ago, but today the Czech Republic got more players than countries like Sweden, Russia and Finland.

When I grew up I think we were two that played hockey in the entire secondary school (out of 150-200 boys). And about two that didn’t play football (almost true - slightly more). That wasn’t primarily due to the lack of rinks. People just don’t care about hockey in most parts of the country.

 

[Name Nameless]

If you wish to believe that then you're of course free to, but considering that already the steroid packaging looks like this I'm not ready to agree that it would be clear. It's very dubious at best.

Clearly saying it is not doping. You can still drive etc even if you use this lip-gloss. No wonder they didn't even notice it. Warning signs are triangular, and not crossed out.

 

[LiveeviL]

The thing I love about this thread most is how much the Finns seem to really hate Norway.

Add to that, that norwegians and finns usually gloat at Sweden if opportunity arise and swedes don't care.

 

[LiveeviL]

Honestly Norway is just gaming the Olympic system to inflate their medal count. They focus on a few specific sports that have a million events because who the **** knows why. Germany does the same thing. Hockey only has 2 potential medals.

I mean good job I guess... focus on the sports with little competition and a ton of events.

It is a bit to much to say gaming the system, but it is partly true. Norway have athletes in about every winter Olympic sport (which all countries can have if they want to start programs). Compared to Sweden Norway have like 5 gold where Sweden don't compete. With that said, I would love to have Swedish athletes in every winter Olympic sport.

 

[Urbanskog]

Still more popular than ice hockey in large parts of Europe - for men. About 1000x more popular among women.

Without knowing I guess hockey is bigger in Sweden (not even sure if that is true as handball is big there), Finland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Russia. Could also be in the UK as they don’t care about either sport. That is for men.

So yeah. Let’s be real.

Not to mention handball have been successful at expanding the sport over the last 10-20 years. There are now good African and Southern American teams. South Korea used to be really good etc.

Is there a single country in the world where handball draws higher attendance figures than hockey?

So yeah. Let's be real.

 

[Name Nameless]

But regarding how the pucks didn't make it to Norway. It's an east-end inner city labour class sport in Norway. Don't know why it catched so hard in Sweden and Finland, where it is almost at a Canadian level. From reading up a bit, it seemed there was a flying start from bandy. And bandy was much bigger in Finland (which was a Russian colony to 1917) and accidentally in Sweden (where they often has alot of Finnish immigration too, don't know if that's something to do with it.). It seems it got a late start, the national association wasn't founded before 1934. And then someone started building up hockey in Norway in the 30's, at a time almost other sports had it, and Norway was a contender in soccer. Then the war came, and all sport was under siege (... the war in Norway was about the soul of Norway, it wasn't really on the frontline, and even sport was in it... -ending up being outlawed by the nazi occupiers. ).. And that brings us to the late fiftys before anyone could even think of investing in hockey-rinks... actually, WW2 rationing lasted to the 60's in Norway. And then Norway was massively out of the race. And there wasn't much building... ever. At this point, hockey was something they did in Sweden.

Well, my take on why hockey is small in Norway.

 

[Havre]

Is there a single country in the world where handball draws higher attendance figures than hockey?

So yeah. Let's be real.

Yes.

That was easy. In terms of number of coutries handball is more popular it would absolutely kill hockey. In terms of total number of players I have no idea. In terms of number of viewers on TV I guess hockey wins, but that would be me guessing.

 

[Urbanskog]

Yes.

That was easy. In terms of number of coutries handball is more popular it would absolutely kill hockey. In terms of total number of players I have no idea. In terms of number of viewers on TV I guess hockey wins, but that would be me guessing.

If it's so easy why didn't you bother to name the countries?

 

[Name Nameless]

If it's so easy why didn't you bother to name the countries?

I'll do it for him. One example? Brazil.

 

[Havre]

If it's so easy why didn't you bother to name the countries?

Already done it.

Germany, Spain, Denmark, Norway, France, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Hungary, Romania, Brazil, Holland, France, Portugal, Tunisia, Algeria, Poland, Angola, Cameroon, Iceland, Macedonia, Egypt etc.

In most of those countries handball isn’t a fringe sport. In many of them top 2 or 3 among team sports behind football.

 

[Urbanskog]

I'll do it for him. One example? Brazil.

And even in Brazil handball isn't even a top 5 sport in popularity.

If we compare the top 10 European leagues of handball and hockey by attendance:

Handball
Germany: 4 640
France: 2 504
Spain: 1 638
Denmark: 1 626
SEHA League (Balkans): 1 608
Sweden: 1 547
Poland: 1 285
Hungary: 808
Norway: 766
Austria: 749

Hockey
Switzerland: 6 872
Germany: 6 343
Sweden: 5 978
KHL: 5 812
Finland: 4 974
Czech Republic: 4 948
EBEL: 2 935
Great Britain: 2 012
Slovakia: 1 794
Norway: 1 741

And of course, this is just Europe, hockey's main concentration is in Northern America. The figures are from 2013-14 as I couldn't find more recent numbers for handball. So how is handball more popular than hockey again?

 

[Havre]

Great. You are now going to tell me hockey is bigger than handball in Norway?

A handball player updating her Instagram is a bigger news story in Norway than winning a hockey game in the Olympics.

I would love it if hockey was a bigger thing though.

 

[Urbanskog]

Great. You are now going to tell me hockey is bigger than handball in Norway?

A handball player updating her Instagram is a bigger news story in Norway than winning a hockey game in the Olympics.

I would love it if hockey was a bigger thing though.

I guess the popularity of handball in Norway is limited to watching the national team play a few playoff-round games in international tournaments every now and then as no one seems to care enough about the sport to attend club-level matches.

 

[Havre]

I guess the popularity of handball in Norway is limited to watching the national team play a few playoff-round games in international tournaments every now and then as no one seems to care enough about the sport to attend club-level matches.

It is true the national team is far more popular than club teams. Strangely enough many of the best club teams are from small places.

Also a case of many of the games are played in facilities not built with big stands.

In my home town the old main handball arena had temporary stands. The main rink,even if it is old and crap, would have a full set of permanent stands.

Most handball arenas are built for kids to play in. Not to host bigger matches.

Not a single Norwegian would say hockey is even close to handball in popularity.

 

[Uncle Scrooge]

It all starts from the culture.. for whatever reason other winter sports once upon a time become a much bigger thing in Norway.

Lack of interest in hockey doesn't make it appealing for young kids to start playing it.

Im a Finn and i have no idea how hockey ever became the #1 sport for us. Since i was a kid it was a pretty big deal. And since then new kids have just been more and more interested in it.

So today when you look at it, it's not a big mystery why they're not a bigger hockey country because they don't have a hockey culture. I guess the better question would be, why didn't hockey ever become a bigger thing decades ago ?

 

[Albatros]

It's even older than the numbers above, but because of its depth there's an interesting crapopedia list of attendance figures of Norwegian sports clubs:

Norske idrettslag sortert etter gjennomsnittlige tilskuertall – Wikipedia

In hockey Storhamar and Stavanger are above 4 000 currently.

 

[Weltschmerz]

Japan is the one that puzzles me.

They've got a large number of registered player and rinks and definitely a industrialized country that cares about sports.

They never had much talent after Taro Tsujimoto.

 

[sr edler]

It's the same with the Baltic states, when it comes to different sporting cultures. In Latvia hockey is pretty popular but in Estonia and Lithuania the sport is more or less non-existent. Estonians likes skiing and cycling and in Lithuania basketball is the big sport.

When it comes to Norway they put too much focus on black metal in the 90s and the talent pool went astray.

 

[Eye of Ra]

Well if Norway had their all-time team right now with all the players in prime they could challenge for medals in tournaments like world championship or olympics with no nhlers.

Patrick Thoresen - Knutsen - Zuccarello
Skröder - Vikingstad - Trond Magnussen
Erik Kristansen - Skaare - Petter Thoresen
M.Olimb - Bastiansen - K.Olimb

Trygg - Holös
Tommy Jakobsen - Myrvold
Norstebö - Tollefsen

Haugen
Volden

For sure, Norway had some good players through the years.

 

[Eye of Ra]

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

Doping in endurance winter sports like biathlon and cross-country skiing is probably similar in scope to cycling if we're honest. I don't think any one country could confidently vouch for all their athletes being clean.

 

[Andon]

Still more popular than ice hockey in large parts of Europe - for men. About 1000x more popular among women.

Without knowing I guess hockey is bigger in Sweden (not even sure if that is true as handball is big there), Finland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Russia. Could also be in the UK as they don’t care about either sport. That is for men.

So yeah. Let’s be real.

Not to mention handball have been successful at expanding the sport over the last 10-20 years. There are now good African and Southern American teams. South Korea used to be really good etc.

Oh that's nice. So I guess the good handball players make some 5-10 million+ every year, right? Because otherwise your post would be quite stupid.