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[ladiesandgentlemen]

I couldn't for the life of me figure out where to post this, but here it is:

GERMANS AIM FOR HOCKEY'S SINGLE-GAME ATTENDANCE RECORD

The IIHF is looking to set an attendance record at the 2010 world championship. The opening game of the 2010 tournament will be played at the Veltins-Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, home of a top-league German soccer team, Schalke 04.

The soccer stadium has a potential capacity of 75,976. Should the game sell-out, it would create a new world record for hockey attendance in a single game, breaking the current record of 74,554, which was set in a game between Michigan State and Michigan in East Lansing, Michigan in 2001.

"This should be a showcase event, which will bring together everything we have learned about staging the IIHF World Championship in a perfect setting," said IIHF president Rene Fasel. "Together with the 2010 Organizing Committee and our long-standing marketing partner Infront we will create a landmark for our sport."

Team Germany is set to take part in the historic opening game...
...
The 2010 IIHF World Championship takes places between May 7-23, 2010 in the Lanxess Arena in Cologne and the SAP Arena in Mannheim. The German Organizing Committee expects 500,000 spectators at the 56 games.

TSN

Amazing.

I hope they can pull it off.

Too bad it's not very cold in Pasadena in January. The Rose Bowl could be an amazing attendance venue for a Winter Classic. What would be more amazing (a miracle, actually) would be to find 106,869 hockey fans in Southern California.

[General:Moters]

I couldn't for the life of me figure out where to post this, but here it is:

Amazing.

I hope they can pull it off.

Too bad it's not very cold in Pasadena in January. The Rose Bowl could be an amazing attendance venue for a Winter Classic. What would be more amazing (a miracle, actually) would be to find 106,869 hockey fans in Southern California.

This has been a big surprise to me and most other German hockey fans when they announced the plans. Hockey is really flying under the radar over here, getting no free-TV coverage at all and most clubs in the league struggling to keep their attendance numbers up. So filling an arena like that seemed to be a bold idea at first sight.
At second thought, it's still bold, but there's some decent thoughts behind it. Ever since the amazing soccer world cup in Germany in 2oo6, Germans have been looking for opportunities to re-live those experiences to some lesser degree. Handball, which gets a lot more TV-coverage than hockey but draws less visitors to the arenas, had its world cup hosted here a year later and was made up to be kind of a sequel and it indeed became a pretty big event. You've got to wonder if they'll be able to pull it off, because marketing has been a job made look incredibly hard by the German hockey association.

If they come up with reasonable prices, I guess I'm gonna be there - even if I have to visit the arena of my most hated football club in the country...