photo: © International Ice Hockey Federation
One of the three topics at the recent IIHF Global Hockey Forum was marketing, and the challenges of getting the message of the greatest game on earth across to as many people as possible.
“The Global Hockey Forum was a tremendous success, and we can take some good nuggets from the marketing track. The next step is to come back and build on those nuggets,” said Dean McIntosh, who moderated the discussions in the Marketing room. As Senior Vice President of Revenue, Fan Experience and Community Impact for Hockey Canada, he was well positioned to keep the conversations going.
“This forum was about bringing people together to look at the best methods and direction we can take hockey forward, and then taking action on those items,” he added.
In essence, the participants went through the entire fan lifecycle in two days as they heard expert presentations on how to attract fans, how to keep them, and how to give them what they want.
Global sports consumption by fans is now higher than pre-covid and continues to grow, according to Claude Hollenstein, Senior Director, Head of Ice Hockey at Infront Sports & Media.
Numbers in the study rank hockey as the seventh most popular team sport in the world, behind soccer, basketball, American football, cricket, baseball, and volleyball. However, since 2020, hockey’s global share has decreased by 25 percent, to 2.8 percent.
“Hockey must recover the market share lost to other team and winter sports,” said Cuyler Holmqvist, Vice President of Executive Search, Strategic Consulting, and Analytics at General Sports Worldwide, as he presented a comprehensive study of fan interest covering five Olympic tournaments, NHL competitions, and more than twenty men’s and women’s IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships.
At the same time, hockey stands at the threshold of a great opportunity. First, the game is still growing – and second, the Olympics.
“The 2026 Olympics in Milan-Cortina will provide a huge opportunity,” Holmqvist added.
If hockey wants to take advantage of the Olympics, the tournament should attract a lot of 14-year-olds since, by then, fandom is born, says Lead Consultant Jonathan Potts at Two Circles.
“Get fans into your sport when they’re under the age of 14, or in the case of hockey even younger,” he said. The chances of a person becoming a true fan decrease rapidly as they get older, according to Potts.
Young fans of hockey like stars, and that has led to team sports being marketed through individuals.
“For a younger generation you need to highlight the top players. Use them to engage with younger audiences and create stars out of your best players in the Worlds, or the Olympics,” Potts added.
The young also like to follow other kids, noted Jonas Persson, Founder of Sportway, a company that uses AI cameras to produce video content from mostly junior leagues in 12 countries. He showed examples of clips featuring an U18 player’s nifty move getting millions of views on social media. And, as Hollenstein noted, 90 percent of Gen Z sports fans use social media to consume sports content, and 62 percent of younger fans cite social media as their main platform to follow sports.
“There is still potential for growth at the junior team level, but as the technology develops, we can even produce games in second-tier leagues, and in some countries even at the top-tier league, as we do in France and Ligue Magnus,” he said.
Thanks to the automated cameras, the French league can now produce all of its games, instead of 30, as was the case previously.
“We’re just at the beginning of the breakthrough,” Persson said.
The same can be said about advertising, and sponsorship opportunities, as new technologies emerge.
“We might find ideas that may not be applied the same way, but the base of the marketing philosophy is the same across the board. There may be different platforms between federations but ultimately a lot of those things can be the same. India shared a photo of an outdoor ice rink, and half the room didn’t know they had outdoor ice!
“That’s an example of how great ideas can come from every corner of the ice hockey world when we bring people together,” he concluded.
The Global Hockey Forum was organized with the support of Région Sud, an official partner of the IIHF for this event. The IIHF would like to thank Région Sud for their valuable contribution.
“The Global Hockey Forum was a tremendous success, and we can take some good nuggets from the marketing track. The next step is to come back and build on those nuggets,” said Dean McIntosh, who moderated the discussions in the Marketing room. As Senior Vice President of Revenue, Fan Experience and Community Impact for Hockey Canada, he was well positioned to keep the conversations going.
“This forum was about bringing people together to look at the best methods and direction we can take hockey forward, and then taking action on those items,” he added.
In essence, the participants went through the entire fan lifecycle in two days as they heard expert presentations on how to attract fans, how to keep them, and how to give them what they want.
Global sports consumption by fans is now higher than pre-covid and continues to grow, according to Claude Hollenstein, Senior Director, Head of Ice Hockey at Infront Sports & Media.
Numbers in the study rank hockey as the seventh most popular team sport in the world, behind soccer, basketball, American football, cricket, baseball, and volleyball. However, since 2020, hockey’s global share has decreased by 25 percent, to 2.8 percent.
“Hockey must recover the market share lost to other team and winter sports,” said Cuyler Holmqvist, Vice President of Executive Search, Strategic Consulting, and Analytics at General Sports Worldwide, as he presented a comprehensive study of fan interest covering five Olympic tournaments, NHL competitions, and more than twenty men’s and women’s IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships.
At the same time, hockey stands at the threshold of a great opportunity. First, the game is still growing – and second, the Olympics.
“The 2026 Olympics in Milan-Cortina will provide a huge opportunity,” Holmqvist added.
If hockey wants to take advantage of the Olympics, the tournament should attract a lot of 14-year-olds since, by then, fandom is born, says Lead Consultant Jonathan Potts at Two Circles.
“Get fans into your sport when they’re under the age of 14, or in the case of hockey even younger,” he said. The chances of a person becoming a true fan decrease rapidly as they get older, according to Potts.
Young fans of hockey like stars, and that has led to team sports being marketed through individuals.
“For a younger generation you need to highlight the top players. Use them to engage with younger audiences and create stars out of your best players in the Worlds, or the Olympics,” Potts added.
The young also like to follow other kids, noted Jonas Persson, Founder of Sportway, a company that uses AI cameras to produce video content from mostly junior leagues in 12 countries. He showed examples of clips featuring an U18 player’s nifty move getting millions of views on social media. And, as Hollenstein noted, 90 percent of Gen Z sports fans use social media to consume sports content, and 62 percent of younger fans cite social media as their main platform to follow sports.
“There is still potential for growth at the junior team level, but as the technology develops, we can even produce games in second-tier leagues, and in some countries even at the top-tier league, as we do in France and Ligue Magnus,” he said.
Thanks to the automated cameras, the French league can now produce all of its games, instead of 30, as was the case previously.
“We’re just at the beginning of the breakthrough,” Persson said.
The same can be said about advertising, and sponsorship opportunities, as new technologies emerge.
“We might find ideas that may not be applied the same way, but the base of the marketing philosophy is the same across the board. There may be different platforms between federations but ultimately a lot of those things can be the same. India shared a photo of an outdoor ice rink, and half the room didn’t know they had outdoor ice!
“That’s an example of how great ideas can come from every corner of the ice hockey world when we bring people together,” he concluded.
The Global Hockey Forum was organized with the support of Région Sud, an official partner of the IIHF for this event. The IIHF would like to thank Région Sud for their valuable contribution.