Popularity of other sports in Finland

[wings5]

Unlike the other surrounding Nordic countries Finland is the sole which claims hockey as its number one. I'm just curious how other sports like soccer and basketball etc compare in the country. They seem to be the best from what I've seen at basketball among the Northern Europeans.

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[Piglet]

Yeah, spectator-wise ice-hockey is number one in Finland by a rather clear margin. Football is more popular as a hobby and it has more registered players (same as Canada as I believe). Something is seriously done wrong in the Finnish football association as we are not able to develop top footballers for some reason - also the level of Finnish football elite league is pretty low and attendance is far behind ice-hockey.

How we are somehow good at basketball - I have no idea. Here in south basketball couldn't be seen anywhere before our national team played great in Euro 2013. There is smallish basketball hype going on here but it is still very unpopular. None of my friends have watched or played it, I only know just few basketball players by name and I am an eager sports fan.

 

[JJTT]

1st Hockey(not even close to any other sport)


2nd Soccer(national team and champions league games are really popular, Finnish league is a joke)



3rd Formula 1



4th Track&field
5th Biathlon/cross country sking/ski jumping etc


Basketball/Volleyball/MMA/ are getting more popular each year since we have had some sucess recently.

Problem with team sports other than hockey here is low quality of the play. Leagues are mostly semi pro with low attendance numbers and very little tv coverage.

National team games in Basketball have been getting more and more coverage and it may very well become #4 sport here in a few years. Getting into Euro and World championships was a great thing.

 

[VictorLustig]

How about floorball & bandy?

 

[JJTT]

How about floorball & bandy?

Floorball is really popular as hobby, not so much as spectator sport. Average league attendance is somewhere between 500-700 per game. Only one or two games are shown in tv per week.

Bandy? Lol Haven't seen any mention of the whole sport in few years.

 

[Korkki]

Spectator-wisely the second in spectator numbers is trotting, but they won't get the media attention that much. Also finnish baseball is quite big and I think it is number one in women sports.

Bandy is popular in some areas, just like handball but in nationwide it is "not mentioned". Actually in YLE Urheiluruutu they tell the results always.

 

[Danjel]

Hockey is definitely the number one sport ATM, but IMO football isn't that far behind. Though I can't see football surpassing hockey as the most popular sport, it's not impossible that someday we see football and hockey pretty even in terms of popularity.

Finland will never have any real success in football because football is hands down the most competed sport in the world, meanwhile hockey has and always will have at most 6-7 countries where hockey is viewed as somewhat relevant sport. Personally I would consider Finnish national football team making the WC or EC a better achievement than basically anything you can accomplish in hockey in the international level. The level of competetion between these two sports is enormous.

The thing that bothers me in most Finns is that they are either too dumb or just plain ignorant to understand that football and hockey aren't comparable sports at all. You can't expect to have same type of success in football than you can in hockey. Only in Germany you have more registered football players than there is hockey players in the whole world. Swedes seem to understand this and football is clearly more popular in Sweden than hockey.

As for other sports like basketball and volleyball, they'll never come close to being the most popular sport in this country and unless Finnish football completely falls of the face of earth, they'll never challenge for the second place either.

 

[Bakayoko Ono]

Soccer is the king of participant sports in the Helsinki region and floorball is probably the #2. There are soccer pitches absolutely everywhere and most kids play organized soccer. I have no idea how floorball isn't more popular globally, it's a great recreational sport (pretty terrible TV/spectator sport though).

Helsinki is a pretty bad sports town when it comes to following and actually caring about the local teams. Most people just don't care about domestic sports and have no deeper connection to any local club and only pay attention to big sporting events or big hockey/soccer games. I'd say a casual "TV event" fan is a good way to describe your typical Helsinki sports fan.

HIFK(hockey), Jokerit(hockey) and HJK(soccer) are the only signifcant pro teams in Helsinki. HJK wins the league basically every year and when they do well in Europe, they get attention. The two hockey clubs are flagships of mediocrity, but have pretty stable following and large casual fan bases. F1 racing and top-level European soccer are popular TV sports. Domestic basketball, floorball, volleyball etc. have their own niche, and I really mean niche, following.

In general, I'd say sports and local clubs aren't part of the fabric of the city's identity the way they are in many other, comparable European cities though the 52 Olympics remain a defining moment in Helsinki's history.

 

[Bakayoko Ono]

They seem to be the best from what I've seen at basketball among the Northern Europeans.

They've been doing well lately, but it's difficult to turn the nation's sporadic enthusiasm for the national team into a more permanent interest in the sport and domestic basketball.

People love winners and we love our national teams when they win at international competitions, no question about it, but that interest in the NT's international success rarely converts into people starting to care about the sport itself and starting to follow some local club.

There are a lot of people in Finland who believe that NT success is some sort of a holy grail that automatically solves all the problems in the sport. Let's ask the floorball folks if that's really the case...

 

[Padawan]

The thing that bothers me in most Finns is that they are either too dumb or just plain ignorant to understand that football and hockey aren't comparable sports at all.

In my experience it's the people who only support football that shows this trait. They complain about ice hockey and degrade it and it's supporters. It's sad how they are bitter for ice hockey being the number one spectator sport in Finland. The hockey people I know doesn't do this but rather hope Finnish football would get some success too.

 

[Jonimaus]

I have no idea how floorball isn't more popular globally, it's a great recreational sport (pretty terrible TV/spectator sport though).

I think it's a pretty good TV sport too. The players are incredibly fast and skilled. I try to watch it whenever they broadcast the swedish national team on TV.

 

[Bakayoko Ono]

Who the hell cares how popular the sport is globally and/or how good "we" are at it compared to other nations? No sport is better than the other, they are all the same; fun games. I've always found sports fans claiming that their favorite sport is "superior" and putting down other sports, extremely vain, insecure and childish.

If you enjoy a sport and are passionate about a team, there should be no need to explain it or "justify" it. Degrading some other sport just because you don't like or care about it is just all kinds of pitiful and achieves nothing.

 

[Bakayoko Ono]

I think it's a pretty good TV sport too. The players are incredibly fast and skilled. I try to watch it whenever they broadcast the swedish national team on TV.

Even though I've been familiar with the sport since I was little, I still struggle watching floorball on TV. It's just so fast, confusing, even chaotic and I have trouble tracking the ball. I find hockey way more easier to watch.

But like I said, it's a fantastic recreational/participant sport. Still a young sport, though.

 

[Finnpin]

Helsinki is a pretty bad sports town when it comes to following and actually caring about the local teams. Most people just don't care about domestic sports and have no deeper connection to any local club and only pay attention to big sporting events or big hockey/soccer games. I'd say a casual "TV event" fan is a good way to describe your typical Helsinki sports fan.

HIFK(hockey), Jokerit(hockey) and HJK(soccer) are the only signifcant pro teams in Helsinki. HJK wins the league basically every year and when they do well in Europe, they get attention. The two hockey clubs are flagships of mediocrity, but have pretty stable following and large casual fan bases. F1 racing and top-level European soccer are popular TV sports. Domestic basketball, floorball, volleyball etc. have their own niche, and I really mean niche, following.

In general, I'd say sports and local clubs aren't part of the fabric of the city's identity the way they are in many other, comparable European cities though the 52 Olympics remain a defining moment in Helsinki's history.

Helsinki has many "country side" people that have moved here and doesn't have connection or love to Helsinki based teams plus in basketball's side the problem was for long time that the main clubs were too much of "territory based" clubs like ToPo being Munkkiniemi team etc. They finally understood to name the new basketball club "as all Helsinki's team".

Basketball is having a big hype. Lots of new juniors started the sport and over 7000 Finnish fans will go to see World Champs in Spain.

 

[Bakayoko Ono]

Helsinki has many "country side" people that have moved here and doesn't have connection or love to Helsinki based teams...

True, but then again that's the case with any comparable regional hub around the world.

 

[Danjel]

In my experience it's the people who only support football that shows this trait. They complain about ice hockey and degrade it and it's supporters. It's sad how they are bitter for ice hockey being the number one spectator sport in Finland. The hockey people I know doesn't do this but rather hope Finnish football would get some success too.

The hockey people are just as bad as football people when it comes degrading the other sport. Doesn't really matter what Finnish football achieves on the club level or in the international stage, you can bet the hockey fans are there degrading everything football has accomplished.

 

[Padawan]

The hockey people are just as bad as football people when it comes degrading the other sport. Doesn't really matter what Finnish football achieves on the club level or in the international stage, you can bet the hockey fans are there degrading everything football has accomplished.

I disagree with that statement. Sure, they may be few bad apples in the bunch but in general it's the football fans that complain and are bad mouthing ice hockey fans.

 

[Bakayoko Ono]

The hockey people are just as bad as football people when it comes degrading the other sport. Doesn't really matter what Finnish football achieves on the club level or in the international stage, you can bet the hockey fans are there degrading everything football has accomplished.

That's a bit of generalization there, don't you think?

 

[FiLe]

A lot of the animosity towards hockey among football fans stems from the fact that hockey has an all-encompassing status in the Finnish society - so much that it actually hurts the other sports. For example, there are many youths who are gifted in many a team sport, and might actually show more promise in something else than hockey, like football, but in the end choose hockey anyway because it appears more glamorous to them.

And this is not speculation - it's a fact. I'm of course a hockey connoisseur above all else so it doesn't bother me personally, but I can feel the football enthusiasts' pain. Still, this is pretty much the only way a nation of measly five million can be world class in at least some team sport. Spreading the resources more evenly would mean Finland could produce more above-average teams in a wider variety of team sports, but not really be a championship candidate in any of them.

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The current status of basketball is kinda curious. I find the game entertaining to watch, and I'm NOT one of those who tuned in the first time last fall when Finland was doing well in EuroBasket. I've followed the game casually since I happened to tune into it during the Beijing olympics, so I wasn't actually all that surprised of Finland doing well in 2013 since I had already checked 'em out in 2011.

There's certainly a small boom for basketball going on right now, but I can't say if the game's here to stay. Let's keep in mind that occasionally you have countries that break above the radar for a short while only to slink back under some time later. It's even happened in our beloved hockey - Slovakia got a good crop of talented players born in the late 70s but couldn't keep up with the production after that.

You could argue that in basketball it is even easier to break above for a while because in hockey you technically need around 30-50 good players to maintain at least some consistency, in basketball you don't really need more than 15 if all the pieces fall together. Finland currently has a highly talented top crop who play together all the time, but it remains to be seen if they can produce the necessary replacements in 5-10 years' time to stay where they are right now.

 

[Jussi]

When it comes to indoor sports attendances, one has to take into account that the arenas can't usually hold more than 1000-3000 people. So that 500-1000 is considered okay for the majority of them.

Volleyball is also a sport Finland has managed to improve on international level and it's really astonishing to to think that In August-September we have teams taking part in FIBA World Cup and Volleyball World Championships. A thought considered unrealistic some years ago.

 

[Finnpin]

I have followed basketball since the 80's and remember when I was a kid and ToPo battled in some euro game against mighty Milan (in European level) and lost only by few points. The level of Finnish basketball has been quite good in the past too and now we are at our highest point.

Loimaa Bisons who played it's euro games in Helsinki got crowds of around 6000 and for them it would have been even closer to play the games in Turku.

I just hope new Helsinki Seagulls team can stay alive and get some success. You can clearly see in everything that it's now "all Helsinki's team" and there is little buzz going. Celebrities have joined the club's operations too.

Like Jussi said for many sports the problem is the small arenas they have to play in but luckily in basketball (and volleyball) they are looking to play some games in bigger arenas too.

"Wolf pack" aka Finnish National Team will play against Lithuania next monday in Jäähalli in Helsinki and already 5000 tickets are sold.

 

[Turkued]

Sporting Culture

Having lived in a bunch of countries (US, Canada, Sweden, Finland, France, Ireland, UK) I can say that Finland is more like the United States in it's sports culture than any other country I've lived in. By this I mean that sports are important, that there is a wide variety of sports to chose from and that there are great regional variations.

Check this out: http://www.americanfootballinternat...n-inaugural-ifaf-champions-league-tournament/ . The best american football team in Europe plays in Helsinki. They only draw a few hundred fans a game, only Turku regularly draws over 700, but if the right teams are involved the Maple Leaf Bowl will hit around 5,000.

I heard of pesapallo but living in Turku I never saw much of it. Travel in the countryside, you see games and gloves everywhere.

Finnish basketball is definitely the best in Norden and has been for some time. Lots of financial problems though.

Football doesn't draw many but I have never lived anyplace where any sport is as important to a community as ROPS is to Rovaniemi. They only draw 1,500 a game but given the population of the city that's OK. Everyone knows how they do, everyone talks about them etc.

Volleyball, F1, in Turku the boat races between the uni's are like the U.K.'s...I love the sporting scene in Finland. When I lived in Turku I had 2 pro hockey teams, 2 pro football teams, a pro basketball team, a few pro imports on the American football team, a town away from a volleyball power...

I'm now in Leeds. I have 1 football team and 2 rugby teams. That's it.

I miss Finland's sporting culture. It really is #1 in Europe.

 

[Finnpin]

Check this out: http://www.americanfootballinternat...n-inaugural-ifaf-champions-league-tournament/ . The best american football team in Europe plays in Helsinki. They only draw a few hundred fans a game, only Turku regularly draws over 700, but if the right teams are involved the Maple Leaf Bowl will hit around 5,000..

Finns were one of the best american football countries in Europe with UK in the early 90's and back then the Finnish championship game had good crowds. 5000 these days? Not possible, not even close. And in European level Finnish teams haven't had success for years. Good to see Roosters winning that, their style is pure offense with the good QB.

 

[bebl]

Check this out: http://www.americanfootballinternat...n-inaugural-ifaf-champions-league-tournament/ . The best american football team in Europe plays in Helsinki. They only draw a few hundred fans a game, only Turku regularly draws over 700, but if the right teams are involved the Maple Leaf Bowl will hit around 5,000.

5k is bit too much imo. Btw Over thousand spectators were present at Royals vs Falcons game(1.Div American Football)

 

[Urbanskog]

The hockey people are just as bad as football people when it comes degrading the other sport. Doesn't really matter what Finnish football achieves on the club level or in the international stage, you can bet the hockey fans are there degrading everything football has accomplished.

Wait, you're saying that Finnish soccer has achieved something?