This. Never understood, even as a fan of an NHL team, why a regular mid-season game that occurs 82 times a year, is more entertaining than a once yearly Canada-Russia (if that).
I do think it’s a bit over saturated. They should probably decrease the Canadian hosting to every third or fourth year instead of every other year (plus a bunch of US border cities thrown in). However, you have to understand the temptation the IIHF must feel when they see this junior tournament generate more cash than their senior tournaments. And when you hold it in a location that doesn’t embrace it, then you get almost nothing. It’s quite the dilemma.
Well, it's worth noting that the World Championship has a lot more games than the WJC due to the sheer amount of teams involved, but.... you guys do know that they don't play the World Championships in NHL sized arenas, right?
The U20 tournament has mere 20 games while the senior tournament has more than thrice the number (64) so it seems odd to only compare the average attendances, not to mention that a bulk of the revenue is generated from broadcasting rights. The U20 championship is more popular than the men's championship only in Canada. I certainly don't buy the assertion that the junior tournament would be more of a cash maker than the senior tournament.
This current tournament has 31 games. Not sure where you got the number 20 from. My point on average attendance is that it also costs less to hold fewer games. It's more lucrative based on how much goes into it. Having said that, It's also possible that NHL buildings have higher rental rates than those in Europe. Not sure how that works, to be honest.
Right, I got the number of games for the WJC wrong but the difference is still enormous. The Canadian WJC is certainly a lucrative business opportunity for the IIHF but so are the men's top division tournaments and as you stated, there are many contributing factors to the revenue streams so no accurate comparisons can be made. There is still nothing concrete to support the assertion that the (Canadian) WJC tournaments would generate more profit than the senior tournaments.
No, nothing concrete. But clearly the Canadian WJC's have made more money than some post 2000 WC's. In any case the entire point of my original post was to show you the difference between a Canadian WJC and a non-Canadian WJC. That was the comparison I was much more interested in and the original purpose of my posting.
This we agree. But I'm not sure TSN pays that much for the rights, do you remember any bidding war with Sportsnet? They get huge ratings that we know but do they pay that much? In Europe the U20 is a small time event while the Seniors are huge on tv. Also for the hosts of the Seniors Worlds there are a lot of foreign fans coming to games so huge $ for the host country-city. Every 3 years in Canada would be enough, now it's really become a Junior Canada Cup with vastly overpriced tickets...
That is obvious of course. Some of the early 2000s tournaments had abysmal attendance figures, far less so during this decade.
Yes, I particularly agree with you on the ticket packages. But those aren't just sold to companies, that is how they market to everybody in Canada. If you want to go to two or three games, you have to buy like 15! It's ridiculous. They open up single tickets toward the end when there aren't many great seats left. All things considered, we still do pretty well in this country for actually putting butts in seats. I was just at a non-Canada game in an 18,000 seat arena and it was probably around 80% full.
the start time doesnt help especially for team canada... 330pm local time on a weekday... come on..
