I’m pretty sure the KHL still ranks behind the Swiss league and the SEL for avg. attendance though.  And the DEL is right there very close to the KHL., as is the AHL.

Posted by Primis on 05/02/12 at 11:52 AM ET

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attendance_figures_at_domestic_professional_sports_leagues

Hmm, yup.  Pretty close.

BTW, fun fact.  Despite a larger playing surface (and thus less available seating in many arenas), the NHL is the single biggest-drawing indoor sports league in the world.  More than the NBA even.  Just sayin’...

Posted by Primis on 05/02/12 at 11:57 AM ET

Also, on a per-team basis, I think only Dynamo Minsk (their arena, at 15,000, has the largest capacity in the KHL) draws more than 10,000 per game. Only five KHL arenas sit 10,000 or more (Minsk, St. Petersburg, Omsk, Riga and Kazan) and many sit 6,000 or fewer.

I have no idea what ticket prices are, either, but I imagine they’re much lower than the NHL average.

You would think at some point the whole league would disintegrate under its own weight, but for now there are enough proud old Russian billionaire oil barons who are willing to lose millions and millions of USD per year so that they can have their own elite hockey teams.

The very best KHL teams are good enough that they might even be able to hack it in the NHL, but it certainly isn’t because the revenue stream alone can support that level of talent.

Posted by Sven22 from Grand Rapids on 05/02/12 at 01:59 PM ET

Also, on a per-team basis, I think only Dynamo Minsk (their arena, at 15,000, has the largest capacity in the KHL) draws more than 10,000 per game. Only five KHL arenas sit 10,000 or more (Minsk, St. Petersburg, Omsk, Riga and Kazan) and many sit 6,000 or fewer.

True.  However that’s also true elsewhere in the other leagues.

In the AHL their avg. attendance is always skewed by Hershey’s 9,872/game this season—a full 2,100 more than 2nd place Providence.  In the Swiss league (NLA) their attendance is boosted by SC Bern which outdrews some NHL clubs at 15,856/game on 2010-11.  The DEL’s is propped up by Eisbaren Berlin (Berlin Ice Bears) who in 10-11 averaged nearly 14,000.  Fort Wayne has propped up avg. league attendance of every league they’ve been in for a couple decades now (UHL, IHL 2.0, now CHL)

One other interesting note in all this has been overlooked though I guess.  The KHL was obviously without Lokomotiv Yaroslavl this season, and in 10-11 they averaged almost 9,000/game (8,998) and were the KHL’s third best draw.  If they managed to grow in spite of that, that growth may actually be a slightly bigger deal than at first glance, depending on if any other new teams came in and how they fared at the gate.

Also, if anyone’s ever interested, Hans Hornstein has a fantastic website tracking North American hockey league attendance:

http://www.mib.org/~lennier/hockey/

Posted by Primis on 05/02/12 at 03:28 PM ET

Posted by Primis on 05/02/12 at 01:28 PM ET

Thanks for the link. Good stuff.

Posted by Sven22 from Grand Rapids on 05/02/12 at 04:13 PM ET