How popular is ice hockey in Germany?

[Melphiz]

popular ... well, for football there are exceptions like one can't believe (especially for the FIFA World bla bla)
having fireworks at midnight, reserved/closed roads for a public fan mile or having a reserverd stadium with couches for public viewing is something one would NEVER get to see for icehockey

if you'd ask people on the streets about clubs in the DEL, they may know their home club and maybe Eisbären Berlin and Kölner Haie but errr, yeah ...

to be honest: playing level isn't high here, it's far lower than NHL and KHL, even lower I think than AHL, so even as a fan of the sports here you won't be satisfied most of the time
I have to admit, I check the games of my team. Most of the other teams ... well, I don't really care nor do I watch icehockey on international level
We have Champions Hockey League starting this year. Well, I wonder who'll go and watch if not only the hardcore hockey people who know about more than their team (I won't, haha).

Anyway, having Servus TV as public spot for watching matches might be nice for the common german guy who likes to watch some icehockey but it's worse for the fans which had Premiere and later Sky (payTV) as they could watch every game and ofc every game of their home team. But now you have to watch what Servus TV decides to show, not suprising having more Red Bull München and other Bavarian games shown than .... badumts Berlin for example.

And Free TV isn't really free if you're watching it in HD on a TV as you need to have cable been payed. Watching the stream (as I do) is usually a pay and only 480p if even.

 

[Eisdork]

popular ... well, for football there are exceptions like one can't believe (especially for the FIFA World bla bla)
having fireworks at midnight, reserved/closed roads for a public fan mile or having a reserverd stadium with couches for public viewing is something one would NEVER get to see for icehockey

if you'd ask people on the streets about clubs in the DEL, they may know their home club and maybe Eisbären Berlin and Kölner Haie but errr, yeah ...

to be honest: playing level isn't high here, it's far lower than NHL and KHL, even lower I think than AHL, so even as a fan of the sports here you won't be satisfied most of the time
I have to admit, I check the games of my team. Most of the other teams ... well, I don't really care nor do I watch icehockey on international level
We have Champions Hockey League starting this year. Well, I wonder who'll go and watch if not only the hardcore hockey people who know about more than their team (I won't, haha).

Anyway, having Servus TV as public spot for watching matches might be nice for the common german guy who likes to watch some icehockey but it's worse for the fans which had Premiere and later Sky (payTV) as they could watch every game and ofc every game of their home team. But now you have to watch what Servus TV decides to show, not suprising having more Red Bull München and other Bavarian games shown than .... badumts Berlin for example.

And Free TV isn't really free if you're watching it in HD on a TV as you need to have cable been payed. Watching the stream (as I do) is usually a pay and only 480p if even.

Hmm, you just described the main problem I have with German hockey fans, that they are actually not hockey fans/fans of the sport, but just fans of their own team. And mostly don't know ANYTHING about the NHL. Sometimes I'm not even sure if all the drumming and singing hardcore supporters even know the rules properly, or if they are just there to have a good time with their buddies.

BTW, The ServusTV stream is free and 720p, also the Satellite broadcast is free and in HD.
So wait, Sky had all games of every game day running parallel?

 

[Ryker]

Hmm, you just described the main problem I have with German hockey fans, that they are actually not hockey fans/fans of the sport, but just fans of their own team. And mostly don't know ANYTHING about the NHL. Sometimes I'm not even sure if all the drumming and singing hardcore supporters even know the rules properly, or if they are just there to have a good time with their buddies.

Why is that important, though? If I lived in Germany, I would probably be focused on DEL, as well. Much more fun than to follow, I'm sure.

 

[Eisdork]

Why is that important, though? If I lived in Germany, I would probably be focused on DEL, as well. Much more fun than to follow, I'm sure.

Of course you have a point. But for example German fans think that having promotions and relegations between leagues is like the most important stuff in all of the sports (currently there is no promotion between DEL and DEL2). And without it there would be no excitement. So when I then say: "Oh, so the AHL and NHL are not exciting?" They have NO idea what I'm talking about. They just don't know anything except their own team.

 

[Ryker]

Of course you have a point. But for example German fans think that having promotions and relegations between leagues is like the most important stuff in all of the sports (currently there is no promotion between DEL and DEL2). And without it there would be no excitement. So when I then say: "Oh, so the AHL and NHL are not exciting?" They have NO idea what I'm talking about. They just don't know anything except their own team.

Ah OK, well I see what you mean, but the problem is there's only so much time one has. I'm not someone who will only follow his team and not the league it's in, either, so I'm with you on that. And, frankly, I've never understood how you wouldn't be interested in other games around the league, but, again, with time constraints, perhaps you just can't get to it all, so you focus on what matters most to you. It's hard to draw a line, though, since you just can't follow everything. But I certainly wouldn't damn anyone who doesn't follow the NHL, because, after all, DEL is a league where the quality of hockey is quite high (from what I've seen), and I'm sure that someone living in Germany can get much more immersed in it than (s)he can in the NHL. That's how it was for me when I still lived in Europe, at least. Nothing beats the experience of going to your team's games and seeing it live in the arena.

 

[Eisdork]

Ah OK, well I see what you mean, but the problem is there's only so much time one has. I'm not someone who will only follow his team and not the league it's in, either, so I'm with you on that. And, frankly, I've never understood how you wouldn't be interested in other games around the league, but, again, with time constraints, perhaps you just can't get to it all, so you focus on what matters most to you. It's hard to draw a line, though, since you just can't follow everything. But I certainly wouldn't damn anyone who doesn't follow the NHL, because, after all, DEL is a league where the quality of hockey is quite high (from what I've seen), and I'm sure that someone living in Germany can get much more immersed in it than (s)he can in the NHL. That's how it was for me when I still lived in Europe, at least. Nothing beats the experience of going to your team's games and seeing it live in the arena.

Yeah maybe it was a bad example. But another thing that bothered me was after I read thru the one and only book about Germany hockey history (published a year ago), I looked thru the two main german hockey forums for a related thread and I didn't even find a single post about it. Again supporting my theory that the average Germany hockey fan is just a fan of his team and not of hockey. I mean, I don't expect everyone to read a book like that, but hello not even the guys who write every day on hockeyforums? I just find it bizarre. Sorry for turning this into my personal rant.

 

[Jonimaus]

Hmm, you just described the main problem I have with German hockey fans, that they are actually not hockey fans/fans of the sport, but just fans of their own team. And mostly don't know ANYTHING about the NHL. Sometimes I'm not even sure if all the drumming and singing hardcore supporters even know the rules properly, or if they are just there to have a good time with their buddies.

BTW, The ServusTV stream is free and 720p, also the Satellite broadcast is free and in HD.
So wait, Sky had all games of every game day running parallel?

Eh, I don't think German fans are different from other places. Most swedish hockey fans probably can't name more than 10 NHL players, and 8 of them are probably Swedish. It wasn't until last year casual fans knew who the hell Erik karlsson is. The people actively following NHL in Sweden is in the low thousand, or even in the mid hundreds.

 

[Deleted member 93465]

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!

You may mock MLS, but it has an aggregate attendance of 6 million, an average attendance of 18,500, and TV rights worth almost $100m a year - and it has to compete with the English Premier League and the Mexican league for interest. No hockey league in Europe comes close.

 

[Sanderson]

Anyway, having Servus TV as public spot for watching matches might be nice for the common german guy who likes to watch some icehockey but it's worse for the fans which had Premiere and later Sky (payTV) as they could watch every game and ofc every game of their home team. But now you have to watch what Servus TV decides to show, not suprising having more Red Bull München and other Bavarian games shown than .... badumts Berlin for example.

And Free TV isn't really free if you're watching it in HD on a TV as you need to have cable been payed. Watching the stream (as I do) is usually a pay and only 480p if even.

Sky never showed all the games, they showed one per gameday, which is exactly the same as Servus TV is doing (including the stream that is).

Servus TV doesn't really show mostly Bavarian teams either. Last season Straubing got hardly any games, while Cologne and Hamburg got plenty. While the setup isn't always perfectly fair for all teams, there is no clear advantage for Bavarian teams. In fact, they do have to show every team and do take performance into account.

There was absolutely no advantage to Sky. There were less viewers and far less people who were potential viewers. The production quality wasn't higher, and neither were the number of games.

 

[BladesofSTEELwFIRE]

You may mock MLS, but it has an aggregate attendance of 6 million, an average attendance of 18,500, and TV rights worth almost $100m a year - and it has to compete with the English Premier League and the Mexican league for interest. No hockey league in Europe comes close.

You realize women's basketball gets higher ratings than MLS? YES the WNBA gets higher ratings than MLS!! I am shocked there are morons out there dumb enough to pay $100 million for a snoozefest like MLS!

 

[BladesofSTEELwFIRE]

Hmm, you just described the main problem I have with German hockey fans, that they are actually not hockey fans/fans of the sport, but just fans of their own team. And mostly don't know ANYTHING about the NHL. Sometimes I'm not even sure if all the drumming and singing hardcore supporters even know the rules properly, or if they are just there to have a good time with their buddies.

BTW, The ServusTV stream is free and 720p, also the Satellite broadcast is free and in HD.
So wait, Sky had all games of every game day running parallel?

You forget that even most American hockey fans don't care once their team is eliminated from the playoffs. Only the NFL has a true national footprint where so many watch even if their team is no longer involved.

 

[FiLe]

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.

If you hear more about Litmanen than Selänne from the Finns, it may have to do with the fact that YOU are German. People here might figure that when you're in the room, it's easier to chat about soccer than try to indulge you about the obsession we have towards this one bizarre wintersport.

Similarly, since Häkkinen and Räikkönen were pretty big rivals of Michael Schumacher, the odds are you recognize those names far easier than some milk-drinker who shot down his glove and doesn't know when to quit. At least in their mind.

 

[Deleted member 93465]

You realize women's basketball gets higher ratings than MLS? YES the WNBA gets higher ratings than MLS!! I am shocked there are morons out there dumb enough to pay $100 million for a snoozefest like MLS!

Those morons are now ESPN, Fox, and Univision, who are paying MLS $720m over 8 years. The previous contract was worth closer to $60m over 3 years.

And an EPL game in the morning on NBC can beat an NHL prime time match on NBC, to say nothing of the Mexican league.

The value of EPL, MLS and Mexican league together is higher than what NBC pays to air hockey. Let that one sit with you for a moment. But no one watches soccer...

 

[Zamboni Parade]

Servus TV doesn't really show mostly Bavarian teams either. Last season Straubing got hardly any games, while Cologne and Hamburg got plenty. While the setup isn't always perfectly fair for all teams, there is no clear advantage for Bavarian teams. In fact, they do have to show every team and do take performance into account.

Yeah, if you look at the regular season games they showed live you'll find the Bavarian teams didn't seem to get any bonus:

Cologne - 15x
Berlin, Hamburg, Mannheim - 9x
Krefeld - 8x
Augsburg - 7x
Munich - 6x
Ingolstadt, Iserlohn, Nuremberg, Straubing - 5x
Düsseldorf - 4x
Schwenningen - 3x
Wolfsburg - 2x

So as you'd expect the big names are at the top while the smaller teams make up the rear. Funnily enough ServusTV's home team, Munich, is found smack in the middle. How suspiciously average
If anything you could make a case for them showing Cologne too often as they got almost a third of all games.

 

[BladesofSTEELwFIRE]

Those morons are now ESPN, Fox, and Univision, who are paying MLS $720m over 8 years. The previous contract was worth closer to $60m over 3 years.

And an EPL game in the morning on NBC can beat an NHL prime time match on NBC, to say nothing of the Mexican league.

The value of EPL, MLS and Mexican league together is higher than what NBC pays to air hockey. Let that one sit with you for a moment. But no one watches soccer...

I was talking MLS. You have NO answer to why MLS ratings are beyond horrible and even the WNBA has higher ratings except MLS sucks and is boring as hell! EPL ratings suck too! 99.8% of Americans don't watch useless EPL!

Sucker...I mean soccer is a cure for insomnia!

 

[Eisdork]

Yeah, if you look at the regular season games they showed live you'll find the Bavarian teams didn't seem to get any bonus:

Cologne - 15x
Berlin, Hamburg, Mannheim - 9x
Krefeld - 8x
Augsburg - 7x
Munich - 6x
Ingolstadt, Iserlohn, Nuremberg, Straubing - 5x
Düsseldorf - 4x
Schwenningen - 3x
Wolfsburg - 2x

So as you'd expect the big names are at the top while the smaller teams make up the rear. Funnily enough ServusTV's home team, Munich, is found smack in the middle. How suspiciously average
If anything you could make a case for them showing Cologne too often as they got almost a third of all games.

Thanks for the overview. I know as soon the ServusTV schedule will be released for the first months people will start complaining again, because they have the wrong idea that the DEL broadcasts are some sort of a public service provided by ServusTV.

But obviously they prefer broadcasting the teams which will provide them with the most viewers, since in the end only the viewer numbers can pay the bills (and I doubt they make a cent profit on the broadcasts). I mean, why the hell should they waste TV time on clubs like Wolfsburg which can barely fill any seats in their home arena, even during playoffs? If people don't even go to the arena, I doubt many more will want to watch them on TV.

 

[Shadowthrone]

Sucker...I mean soccer is a cure for insomnia

And this is why god gave you baseball

And I can appreciate, unlike many of my fellow Europeans, the skill it takes to throw or hit a ball like that.

 

[Sanderson]

Yeah, Americans complaining about other sports being boring is kind of funny, as the already cover all the bases when it comes to boring sports. Not to mention their sports need to take a break every few seconds to make the most out of the almost non-existant attention span its citizens have

Now, if they had a sport that wasn't 95% break and 5% sport, or one that wasn't a wussified version of a European sport, one might even be able to take them seriously

 

[Shadowthrone]

Yeah, Americans complaining about other sports being boring is kind of funny, as the already cover all the bases when it comes to boring sports. Not to mention their sports need to take a break every few seconds to make the most out of the almost non-existant attention span its citizens have

Now, if they had a sport that wasn't 95% break and 5% sport, or one that wasn't a wussified version of a European sport, one might even be able to take them seriously

If you mean American football though with wussified because of the pads, think again.
Pretty different game from rugby with the element of forward passing, and the resulting hits are much harder.
Anyway, I'm not nearly watching as much NFL as I used to when I was younger. Can't stand the constant brainwashing with these mind numbing ads anymore

 

[Starbuds]

How much has Dirk Nowitzki done for German basketball?

 

[Jussi]

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.

Actually quite a lot of people care. Travels to Spain for Finland's games have been selling very well and I expect the ratings for games on tv to be fairly good as well. I think at Eurobasket they were already good. The tournament will be going on pretty much the same time as the KHL season start and it's pretty obvious the sports medias will focus the "Wolfpack" instead of Jokerit.

 

[Urbanskog]

Actually quite a lot of people care. Travels to Spain for Finland's games have been selling very well and I expect the ratings for games on tv to be fairly good as well. I think at Eurobasket they were already good. The tournament will be going on pretty much the same time as the KHL season start and it's pretty obvious the sports medias will focus the "Wolfpack" instead of Jokerit.

That's just because Spain is one of the main holiday destinations for the Finns which means that they get to enjoy their vacation while waving flags.

 

[FiLe]

I think at Eurobasket they were already good.

Better than good. Finland clearly had one of the most visible fan groups present. To the people heading to Spain it will be a main activity, not just something that's conveniently there.

It's hard to say how enthusiastic the nation at large will be of the upcoming World Cup, but those who do care will show it. One thing that will undoubtedly help TV ratings is that the games will be free and adless on the main national channel. That's always a good way to ensure that plenty of folks who wouldn't otherwise will tune in.

But. While it is inaccurate to claim that no one will care, it's obvious regardless that in Finland, basketball's still a far cry from hockey in popularity.

 

[BladesofSTEELwFIRE]

And this is why god gave you baseball

And I can appreciate, unlike many of my fellow Europeans, the skill it takes to throw or hit a ball like that.

I'm an American but CANNOT STAND baseball! It's even more boring than soccer!

Ball....strike....foul......ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

The truth is baseball ratings have collapsed in America since their peak in the 70s/80s. It is more of a regional game now.

 

[BladesofSTEELwFIRE]

How much has Dirk Nowitzki done for German basketball?

I would hope Uwe Krupp of some other German hockey player is more popular or as popular as he is.