Tappara’s CEO Mika Aro commented on audience numbers in 2024

Men’s the audience numbers of the hockey league have caused astonishment during the early rounds.

In a quarter of the matches, the number of spectators has fallen below 3,000, and in the worst cases the limit of even 2,000 spectators has been reached.

The readings are worrying for the SM league.

The phenomenon is also noticeable in Tampere’s Nokia Arena. Tappara has already lost 4,200 spectators twice, and even Friday’s IFK match attracted only 6,200 hockey fans.

HIFK is traditionally one of the most interesting away teams in the series, but now it only pulled the Nokia Arena to half.

This week we also saw that football was of more interest in Tampere than ice hockey. At the same time that Tappara played in front of more than 4,200 spectators in Nokia-arena against KalPa, the top football league match between Ilves and Kuopio Palloseura was watched by almost 6,000 spectators in Tammela.

Tampere’s football boom can also be seen in Ilves’ puck event on Saturday, when the members of Section 41 travel to Helsinki for the men’s football league match between HJK and Ilves instead of the Lukko home game.

Tampere clubs urgently need people for their home games, because the costs of the Nokia Arena are high.

“The price of the average ticket and corporate sales have a lot to do with how much of a single game is plus or minus. But it can be said that those games with less than 5,000 spectators are losses”, CEO of Tampara’s league team’s background company Tamhockey oy Mika Aro says.

However, Aro is not more worried. He says the average viewership for the entire season is usually 1.4 to 1.5 times the September average, depending on the timing of the local games.

According to Aro, the tight pace of matches in September has eaten up the audience numbers, when there have been six home games in the league and CHL in two weeks. The warm weather may have also affected the numbers. According to him, season ticket sales have gone on as before.

“We strongly believe that the audience average will start to drop this year as well.”

Last season, Tappara’s audience average was almost 8,500. Still, Tamhockey’s result for the last fiscal year was 227,000 euros below zero.

Last season, Tappara never fell below 5,000 spectators.