The Russian audience was initially skeptical about the current World Hockey Championship, to put it mildly. Is it possible to take seriously the tournament, from which one of the strongest teams was removed, bypassing any sports principles? Subsequently, the domestic audience simply announced a boycott to competitions in Finland: we don’t need such hockey!

It soon turned out, however, that the scandalous championship was not particularly popular in the country of Suomi either. According to the latest data, in terms of attendance, today’s tournament is confidently moving towards a historical anti-record: most games are played in half-empty stands.

The recent state of emergency at the stadium in Helsinki threatens to kill this defective tournament completely. If you can’t organize it properly, don’t do it!

Is the World Cup in Finland hopeless?

Just a few days after the start of the 2022 World Cup, its Finnish organizers were faced with very unpleasant statistics. According to specialists’ calculations, the average attendance of the tournament’s matches in the first three days was… 5353 people. This result is a failure by any measure. So far, the Finns are only interested in the matches of their national team, but for the rest of the games, extras are not recruited at all – even taking into account discounts on tickets.

However, the Finns had hope for the growth of the cherished figures. At the end of the day, it’s the playoff games that are most popular with fans that could drive up the averages. It is premature to draw conclusions based on the group stage alone, even if the performance of the 2022 World Cup claims to be the worst in the 21st century.

Photo: © Maxim Thore / Keystone Press Agency / Global Look Press

However, the recent scandal in Helsinki may deprive the Finnish organizers of faith in the coming breakthrough. After the incident in the capital’s ice palace, hockey fans may completely lose interest in the tournament and prefer other, safer, leisure activities to going to the stadium.

Ice and fire in Helsinki

On May 19, the match between the national teams of Denmark and Germany, which was supposed to take place at 16:20 Moscow time at the Helsinki Arena, was unexpectedly postponed. The spectators had already taken their places in the stands, when suddenly an emergency evacuation was announced at the stadium, seriously frightening the audience.

Fans urgently left the arena and flooded the surrounding area. At the same time, there was no visible reason for postponing the match: preparations for the game were proceeding as expected on the court.

Soon, American journalists clarified the situation for the general public. It turned out that a fire had broken out in the ice palace. There was a fire in the kitchen, located in the play area.

There is still no official information on the incident, but, judging by eyewitness reports on social networks, no one was injured as a result of the fire. To solve the problem of the site administration, it was necessary to call firefighters: the specialists coped with the fire in less than half an hour.

People all this time crowded around the stadium, frantically updating news feeds. It is still unknown whether the match between the Germans and the Danes will be played at all, but it is clear that the Finnish organizers once again got into a puddle, and the shares of their tournament will now fall even more. Memories of this trip to the Helsinki stadium are unlikely to inspire the audience to do it again, and word of mouth will certainly do its job. One more such incident, and the tournament in Finland, perhaps, can be curtailed altogether.