WC: in 2 countries

[ufon68]

I would have thought that improving robin-round attendance was the primary reason for split organization, you create more demand for the less interesting part of the tournament(since only half of those games are available in 1 country) and get more people in the stands.

Well, i guess that was the idea. But someone got greedy....

I hope lessons were learnt, i just can't imagine seeing the same empty stadiums with zero atmosphere all over again next year, this was very bad for hockey and actually influenced the quality of play as well.

 

[BusQuets]

what do you mean?
Are you denying the fact that no-one cares about soccer in Finland?

Think about it logically. There are way more registered player in football(~120000) than in hockey(60000) and even more difference as a hobby. Finland has not made it to EC or WC even once and it still draws olympic stadium full (30000), If Finland makes it to EC football would just steamroll over hockey in terms of popularity.


I don't mind WC in 2 countries at all.

 

[Eisen]

Why did they have it in 2 countries to begin with? Both Sweden and Finland should be able to host it on their own (and already did).

 

[Eisen]

Why not co-host it like between Denmark, Norway and Island. Of course hosting nations should get their places automatically!

Splitting the hosting is rubbish. This year it kind of worked in Finland (if you don't take ticket prices into account and that there was minimal atmosphere generally in Helsinki outside the arena), but that's because we won last year.

It's interesting to see how it will effect next year, ticket prices and interest in general.

I want to see cheap tickets so I could go and watch some Austria - France game or similar!

Does Iceland even have 2 rinks? I really dunno. Handball is the undisputed no1 sports there afaik.

 

[Schalkenullvier*]

really? I have hard time to believe that. It's hard to imagine all country partying on the streets jsut because of qualifying to World Cup. With Olympic gold, that would happen for sure.

Well, FWIW when Trinidad&Tobago qualified for the 2006 world cup (knocking out Barain on pens or something stupid), the president declared national holiday, so there you go lol.

I don't know... in football, co-hosting never seems to be a problem... what is everyone's problem with it in theory?

I agree though that 2 countries like finland and sweden shouldn't co-host when they can host one on their own. Same goes for Germany, but I assume that's more about helping out france.

 

[saskriders]

Tourist dollars two years in a row

 

[LiveeviL]

The worst part of the entire set up, if you ask me, was having teams play the quarterfinals matchups within their groups.


They should have done cross group matchups, but they couldn't simply because of the travel issue.

Shame

Yes that was bad and the travel issue is just something someone has dreamt up. Helsingfors- Stockholm is an easier travel than say Stockholm - Göteborg. The national border means nothing (stating the obvious is sometimes man's first duty).


I have nothing against cooperative hosting, but not as this. I could see it as a way to promote hockey in a neighbour country which is not very strong on hockey (or were hockey got weak funding, often the same these two).

I could see:
Finland - Estonia
Sweden - Denmark/Norway
Austria - Slovenia
Czech - Poland
Swiss - France


Of course the tournament will be crappier by this, but it would promote hockey and I see that as a bigger goal than the tournament as a means of itself.

 

[roto]

I think it's not a problem that the tournament is shared between Helsinki and Stockholm. The distance is only 400km and can easily be travelled by flying or by boat.

Some posters here claim that olympic gold would be some kind of ultimate dream of the fans in finland. I disagree. General public doesn't care whether the tournament is best-on-best or not. Yes, some of fans would give olympic gold noticeably higher value than WHC gold, but celebrations wouldn't be bigger than WHC last year. If Finland had won in Vancouver, I guess the celebrations had been quite mild when compared to last year: 1) final game was played very late in the evening 2) tournament was held in the middle of the winter and season 3) the players wouldn't have travelled to Helsinki to celebrate - the NHL season continued almost the day after.

 

[QnebO]

I think it's not a problem that the tournament is shared between Helsinki and Stockholm. The distance is only 400km and can easily be travelled by flying or by boat.

Some posters here claim that olympic gold would be some kind of ultimate dream of the fans in finland. I disagree. General public doesn't care whether the tournament is best-on-best or not. Yes, some of fans would give olympic gold noticeably higher value than WHC gold, but celebrations wouldn't be bigger than WHC last year. If Finland had won in Vancouver, I guess the celebrations had been quite mild when compared to last year: 1) final game was played very late in the evening 2) tournament was held in the middle of the winter and season 3) the players wouldn't have travelled to Helsinki to celebrate - the NHL season continued almost the day after.

True, so partywise, one could argue well why he took WC gold over olympic gold.

 

[Bakayoko Ono]

Think about it logically. There are way more registered player in football(~120000) than in hockey(60000) and even more difference as a hobby.
...

I'm a registered soccer player and I've never played organized hockey; guess what my favorite sport is...

Most kids in Helsinki metropolitan area play/have played organized soccer, there are soccer fields pretty much everywhere and the local soccer club, HJK has dominated Finnish football for decades... and still hockey is by far the more popular spectator sport in H:ki.

 

[stv11]

I agree with most points discussed in this thread. I'll add that as someone who enjoys to attend the tournament, I like to try to visit both host cities and see as many teams as possible, but this year it was not easy to do and I only went to Helsinki. I can understand why co hosting could be the way to go for some countries (Austria/Hungary or Italy/Slovenia would be fine, or why not London/Paris if you want to think out of the box), but Finland and Sweden are certainly able to host the tournament alone (I don't undersand the Germany/France bid for 2017 either. Germany is the last country to need a co host).

Regarding the quarterfinals being played within the same pool, I agree this shouldn't happen. If travel is an issue, just play all four games in the main venue like they did in 2009 and 2011. This way fans also have the opportunity to attend all four games.

 

[WaltWhitman]

Soccer sucks. It's a joke that it's the most popular sport.

There, I said it.

 

[zorz]

Soccer sucks. It's a joke that it's the most popular sport.

There, I said it.

It's easy to play it, that's why it's so popular. You need just a ball, not even special shoes are necessary to play soccer for fun with a bunch of friends.

 

[Sanderson]

I don't know... in football, co-hosting never seems to be a problem... what is everyone's problem with it in theory?

Co-hosting is a problem in football. You could have two teams that usually wouldn't qualify take up places. And not only that, the hosts are set as group-heads, which leads to some ridiculous situations because they are usually not even close to being good enough for that. Take the upcoming EC, Poland and Ukraine were half of the first pot even though they belong in the 3rd or 4th if you went by their actual level. Because of that all other teams were pushed down and now we have two of the three highest rated teams in the same group. Wouldn't have happened if there had been only one host.

 

[Uncle Scrooge]

It's easy to play it, that's why it's so popular. You need just a ball, not even special shoes are necessary to play soccer for fun with a bunch of friends.

This. Especially in so many countries where kids just cannot afford anything else. I have nothing against soccer, but hockey is my and Finland's favorite sport hands down.

About this 2-country WC experimentation, as an idea i think it was worth trying but there is no way that its going to work with these ticket prices they had. Also i think it would be better suited for some smaller hockey countries like Denmark and Norway. Im sure the interest would be alot better there.

 

[Oyabun]

I don't have a problem with two countries hosting a major sporting event. The WC could've been great this year but they screwed it up royally. Next year will be much better, they learned from their mistakes. When they slashed the prices this year it was a bit too late. People from other parts of the country didn't have enough time to make the vacation arrangements and make the trip to Stockholm.

 

[Jussi]

Not really true, compared to WHC true, but for SM-liga or NHL?

What i mean we wont know how big soccer "WHC" would be..

Finland isn't a sports nation, we're a bandwagon nation. What ever sports there's been success in, it's followed. Like swimming, javelin, ski jumping, floorball.

 

[LSnow]

Finland isn't a sports nation, we're a bandwagon nation. What ever sports there's been success in, it's followed. Like swimming, javelin, ski jumping, floorball.

Yeah pretty much that.. Ad to that every "popular" sport is slowly going behind pay-tv its really killing the audience for popular sports.. Most sad is major decline in SM-liga.

 

[tony d]

Yeah, don't agree with 2 countries hosting an event like this. It's worked with just 1 nation hosting it for years now, why change it?