BladesofSTEELwFIRE
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- Feb 15, 2010
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How popular is ice hockey in Germany?
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Luc Gretzky
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- Jun 24, 2012
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What about the youth hockey scene in Germany, specifically Berlin? I'll be moving there soon, and would love to teach private lessons or coach peewee/bantam level kids. Does anyone have some insight on this?
BladesofSTEELwFIRE
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FASS Berlin
Eisbären Juniors Berlin
ECC Preussen Juniors e.V. Berlin
OSC Berlin - Abteilung Eishockey
Berlin Blues
That are all Berlin clubs having youth teams afaik. I don't know if/how you can get in. You'd have to contact them for that.
Maybe someone here has more information?
Keep in mind not everyone in Germany speaks english well, especially not kids.
Concerning popularity of ice hockey in Germany:
Media coverage of hockey here is absolutely horrendous. Even the playoff finals will often only get a few lines in the 'Other Sports' collum of major newspapers, 80-90% of sport pages are filled with soccer news. Maybe a page for Formula 1, Tennis and Boxing also gets more coverage in newspapers.
On TV between 1994 until 2012 the DEL could only be seen on pay TV, you would have to buy a rather expensive package to get the specific sport channel. Most Germans are used to Free TV and the number of subscribers for those kind of packages are rather low.
During the pay TV years as far as I know 2 games were shown each week, one on Friday and one one Sunday. And TV viewership averaged at around just 20.000 per game. (Compare that to Formula 1 races which get up to 10 million, or soccer games which can go above 20 million).
Luckily the Red Bull owned free-TV station ServusTV has bought the DEL TV rights in 2012 for the next 4 years ( with an optional 3 year extension). They broadcast one game on Sundays, on Fridays one game is streamed live on an Red Bull owned sports website. During the playoffs every day a game is shown. I have to say that ServusTV has done a fantastic job and the quality of the presentation is really great.
TV viewership is rising and a new record was reached during the last playoffs finals, when one game was watched by up to 470.000 TV viewer. Annual TV viewership for the 2012/12 Sunday games was 55.000, in 2013/14 it has gone up to 100.000.
Media coverage of hockey here is absolutely horrendous. Even the playoff finals will often only get a few lines in the 'Other Sports' collum of major newspapers, 80-90% of sport pages are filled with soccer news. Maybe a page for Formula 1, Tennis and Boxing also gets more coverage in newspapers.
On TV between 1994 until 2012 the DEL could only be seen on pay TV, you would have to buy a rather expensive package to get the specific sport channel. Most Germans are used to Free TV and the number of subscribers for those kind of packages are rather low.
During the pay TV years as far as I know 2 games were shown each week, one on Friday and one one Sunday. And TV viewership averaged at around just 20.000 per game. (Compare that to Formula 1 races which get up to 10 million, or soccer games which can go above 20 million).
Luckily the Red Bull owned free-TV station ServusTV has bought the DEL TV rights in 2012 for the next 4 years ( with an optional 3 year extension). They broadcast one game on Sundays, on Fridays one game is streamed live on an Red Bull owned sports website. During the playoffs every day a game is shown. I have to say that ServusTV has done a fantastic job and the quality of the presentation is really great.
TV viewership is rising and a new record was reached during the last playoffs finals, when one game was watched by up to 470.000 TV viewer. Annual TV viewership for the 2012/12 Sunday games was 55.000, in 2013/14 it has gone up to 100.000.
BladesofSTEELwFIRE
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Good news TV viewership has gone up! If Germany can have a break out tournament at either the Worlds or Olympics it would really help.
Siamese Dream
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They got 4th in their home world championship in 2010, which is more than they will be able to expect for a long long time.
As a Finnland regular I have to agree to all this, but at the end of the day Finnland is a very nationalistic country(even worse than Germany!). They're always gonna be into the sport where Finns are at the top of the list. From the people I've met in Finnland, I can tell you that most of them arent into hockey on a daily basis, and barely know more than 10 nhl players(8 of them are Finnish+Crosby+Ovechkin). I cant tell how important the SM-Liiga is to them, but I feel like I know more about the league than most guys who live over there. Their main focus is the Olympics and the IIHF, being extremely passionate(in other words drunk) about their own team and still never heard of a certain amount of players on their team.
To draw a conclusion, I have the feeling that its Finnlands nr.1 dream to qualify for the football world cup one day, which will be the day soccer takes over the "hockey"-nation. Selanne is one of the finnish heros, but I feel like he is a couple inches behind Jari Litmanen(football player), in terms of legendary status.
Oh yeah, this was a thread about Germany, haha, and hockeys popularity. Im quite certain the FIFA, UEFA, DFB and DFL have not got 1% interest for another sport on the rise in the Germany. The cake is already split up, not willing to share pieces with anyone else. The #3 NHL draftpick this year got like a small sidenote on the newspapers, right after the horse dressage news. I really thought the 2014 NHL entry draft might increase NHL's/hockey's popularity, but people couldnt care less since its THE World Cup right now, as if there was only one world cup, and only one sport that makes sense to watch.
BladesofSTEELwFIRE
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What does that have to do with Germany? That's about the Czechs.
So the big 7 in hockey are:
Canada
USA
Russia
Sweden
Finland
Czech Republic
Who is the 7th? Slovakia??
BladesofSTEELwFIRE
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It didn't. Because for the next 2 years you still could only watch the DEL on Pay TV. Like I said, average viewership was 20.000 per game.
It's more like the bump everyone expects soccer to get in the US during every world cup, but as soon as the world cup is over nobody cares any longer about soccer.
He linked to the IIHF homepage of the 2010 World Championship in Germany.
BladesofSTEELwFIRE
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LOL...so true about soccer in America. Most of those tens of thousands of fans who packed Soldier field and other venues across the USA wouldn't touch MLS with a 10 foot pole now that the USMNT is gone from the World Cup!
Now, really? The fact is that Selänne is more popular than Litmanen by a landslide and Finland is absolutely horrible at soccer. Finland will never qualify for the World Cup in our life time and nobody attends the Finnish soccer matches as can be seen from these pictures:
Now, really? The fact is that Selänne is more popular than Litmanen by a landslide and Finland is absolutely horrible at soccer. Finland will never qualify for the World Cup in our life time and nobody attends the Finnish soccer matches as can be seen from these pictures:
While I don't doubt the attendance for the finnish football league is probably very low (I have no reasons not to believe you), you can easily take pictures like that making many arenas look empty despite being half full.
While I don't doubt the attendance for the finnish football league is probably very low (I have no reasons not to believe you), you can easily take pictures like that making many arenas look empty despite being half full.
Well, the average attendance this season is lower than your post count (2107) so... yeah. http://www.veikkausliiga.com/Statistic.aspx?id=6
Now, really? The fact is that Selänne is more popular than Litmanen by a landslide and Finland is absolutely horrible at soccer. Finland will never qualify for the World Cup in our life time and nobody attends the Finnish soccer matches as can be seen from these pictures:
I wouldnt wanna doubt what you're saying since you definitely know better whats going on in your country. I used the Litmanen-Selanne comparison to show that hockey isnt the #1 sport in Finnland, like football/soccer is the definite #1 in Germany. Let's say the hockey iihf and the fifa world cup were at the same time and Finnland qualified for both of them. Do you really think the hockey one would be more important to finnish society?
It's not like I know everything about Finnland but I have 4 close friends, and I have been to your country 10, maybe 15 times. The thing is that my friends lived outside of Finnland for most of their life but they're still Finns at heart. I know them and their friends and based on my experience I felt like Litmanen was more of big deal compared to Selanne, but I could be wrong on that one since I only know guys from the Helsinki area.
I would have listed the Finnish sports legends in this order:
Litmanen
Raikkonen(used to be Hakkinen)
Selanne (Kurri, etc.)
...
then Hyypya, rallye drivers and Janne Ahonen
btw the Scandic hotel in Espoo sucks big times!
Just the name Veikkausliiga is the biggest irony itself. For those of you who dont know, Veikkaus is the sports gambling monopoly in Finnland, and I think its even run by the government.
Thats worse than having an ODDSET-Bundesliga or the Ladbrokes Premier League
BladesofSTEELwFIRE
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I once read an article on German hockey and it said Uwe Krupp is still one of the most popular athletes in Germany. Is that true?
The vast majority of Germans has no idea who Uwe Krupp is. Some might know him from his years as coach of the national team. None of his NHL games was shown in Germany and I would guess that the number of people who actually saw him play in the NHL is in the low thousands in a country of 80 million...
I used the Litmanen-Selanne comparison to show that hockey isnt the #1 sport in Finnland, like football/soccer is the definite #1 in Germany. Let's say the hockey iihf and the fifa world cup were at the same time and Finnland qualified for both of them. Do you really think the hockey one would be more important to finnish society?
How isn't ice hockey the absolute #1 sport in Finland? No other sport even comes close when comparing the tv ratings. I think you're forgetting that hockey has long history in Finland and kids grow up watching the game. It's not like qualifying for the FIFA World Cup would make the nation dump the sport it loves. Finland just qualified for the FIBA World Cup for the first time in history and see how many care?
None.
I think you're picturing Finns as some kind of massive gloryhunters who'd be ready to switch to any sport from soccer to form floating at the moment success is achieved at some different sport.
Regarding Litmanen being the "most legendary athlete", that's just wrong. Just hold some kind of a survey the next time you're in Finland and ask bypassers who's the most legendary Finnish athlete and you'll quickly realize that a vast majority answers that it's Selänne. Sure, you might come across a couple of bitter soccer fanatics who cry themselves to sleep every night because of the fact that soccer is just a marginal, amateur sport (Veikkausliiga isn't even a professional league) here.
As you might tell by looking at my location, I live in the Helsinki area as well. I personally know hardly anyone who watches soccer actively, some people might turn on the tv during the World Cup, but people do that during every big international sport event, be it the World Cup or Summer Olympics.
What did you expect from a hotel that looks like a block of concrete?
Just the name Veikkausliiga is the biggest irony itself. For those of you who dont know, Veikkaus is the sports gambling monopoly in Finnland, and I think its even run by the government.
Thats worse than having an ODDSET-Bundesliga or the Ladbrokes Premier League
You know that last season the main sponsor of the DEL was Cashpoint, right?
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