24 group tournament games sold out – Hockey – Sportacentrs.com

The fact is that the games of the Latvian national hockey team have been among the most attended in every world championship since 2019. A year ago, Latvia, which played its subgroup games in Riga, with an average of 8,930 viewers in its games, was the second best-attended team in the tournament, only behind the other host, Finland. Exactly the same situation in 2022, when Finland hosted the entire tournament (11.4 thousand viewers on average for Finland, 7.5 thousand for Latvia).

On the other hand, the WC held in Riga in 2021 is, of course, an exception due to the restrictions of Covid-19, which did not allow spectators to enjoy hockey in person. But before that, at the 2019 WC held in Slovakia, the Latvian national team was in third place in terms of game attendance.

These figures will be difficult to repeat this spring. The World Championship will be held in two arenas – O2 Arena in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, which has 17.3 thousand seats, and 350 km away in Ostrava’s “Ostravar Arena”, which has 10 thousand seats. The Latvian national team will play in subgroup B in Ostrava, which means that in order to play in the almost twice larger Prague arena, they will have to reach at least the quarter-finals.

Five days before the start of the WC, tickets are still available for all games in Latvia. The Latvia-Slovakia match, in principle, qualifies as “sold out”, because individual tickets for it can no longer be purchased and only a few day tickets are available on the Czech ticket platform (worth 5,470 crowns or 220 euros).

Latvia’s game against Poland on May 11 (about 100 free seats) and Latvia’s game against Sweden on May 18 (less than 50 free seats) are also close to being sold out. There are still 80 free individual tickets and 235 day tickets available for the game against France, around 200 free seats are available for Latvia’s match against the USA.

For logical reasons, the lowest ticket sales activity is for Latvia’s games against Kazakhstan and Germany. They will be afternoon games on Tuesday and Wednesday (May 14 and 15). About 600 more tickets are available against Germany, while several thousand more tickets are available against Kazakhstan.

Ticket prices are different for different games. For example, tickets for the Latvia-Kazakhstan game were available at prices from 20 to 40 euros (not including VIP tickets, which are, of course, much more expensive), while the prices for the games against Poland and Germany range from 40 to 80 euros.

Nine of the 28 games in Ostrava’s group are currently sold out, and it’s no big surprise that Slovakia’s games are the most popular. After all, Ostrava is only 50 km from the Slovakian border. There are only a few days of tickets left for the Slovakia matches while all individual tickets are sold out. In addition to Slovakia’s seven games, only these two games – France-Germany and France-Kazakhstan – have been sold out in the Ostrava group.

Meanwhile, all matches of the Czech national team have been sold out in the Prague group, as well as eight other matches. Prague sold out 15 of the 28 group stage games, and in total, 24 of the 56 group stage games are currently sold out across the entire tournament.

Sold out games right now

Resources used:
IIHF – Home