A capacity crowd celebrates a Czech goal at the 2025 IIHF Women's World Championship in Ceske Budejovice.
photo: © INTERNATIONAL ICE HOCKEY FEDERATION / MATT ZAMBONIN
Ceske Budejovice is a record breaker! The 2025 championship is officially the best attended Women’s World Championship staged outside of North America.
Sunday night’s game between USA and Canada attracted a crowd of 5.538, taking the tournament aggregate to 56,025. That’s more than the 51,247 fans who attended games in Espoo, Finland, in 2019.
Impressively, the record has fallen before the end of the group stage. We’ve had 14 games so far in South Bohemia, with an average crowd of 4,001. In 2019, the average attendance was 1,767 as the Finns made history to become the first European team to reach a gold-medal game.
“I’m very happy that we have beaten the European attendance record,” said Jiri Sindler, secretary general of the tournament organising committee. “But I hope we can go even higher and reach the world record.
“Women’s hockey is getting more and more popular in Czechia and we are proving that here. I hope that an event like this is hoping to strengthen the appeal of the women’s game around the world.”
Not surprisingly, the biggest crowds have been for games involving the host nation. All three of Czechia’s games have been 5,869 sell-outs as Ceske Budejovice gets behind its national team. But there is also interest in the rest of the tournament: Canada and the USA had 5,538 for their heavyweight clash, the Group B encounter between Norway and Germany also attracted a 5,000+ attendance on Saturday afternoon and even the typically hard-to-sell 11am starts have attracted encouraging crowds amid efforts to promote the tournament in local schools.
The next target for the organisers is the all-time Women’s World Championship attendance record. That was set in 2007 in Winnipeg, Canada, when 119,231 fans saw 20 games as Hayley Wickenheiser led the host nation to a ninth gold medal. This year’s tournament has 10 teams, compared with eight that year, and the expanded format means 29 games rather than 20 – bringing the record into view.
“I guess we can probably reach 120,000 spectators here in the arena by the end of the tournament,” Sindler added. “It’s only halfway so we will see what happens, but I hope we can get there.”
The remaining Czech group-stage game against Canada is already sold out, as are next Sunday’s medal games. And it’s standing room only for Saturday’s semi-finals, so the optimism seems well-founded.
If it happens, a Women’s Worlds attendance record would see Ceske Budejovice repeat the success of Prague and Ostrava, hosts of last year’s record-breaking Men’s World Championship. And that would surely add even more weight to the popular local boast that Czechia has the most passionate hockey fans in the world.
There are still tickets available for many of the remaining games. For details of the latest availability, and to book your place, visit the official ticket sales website.
Sunday night’s game between USA and Canada attracted a crowd of 5.538, taking the tournament aggregate to 56,025. That’s more than the 51,247 fans who attended games in Espoo, Finland, in 2019.
Impressively, the record has fallen before the end of the group stage. We’ve had 14 games so far in South Bohemia, with an average crowd of 4,001. In 2019, the average attendance was 1,767 as the Finns made history to become the first European team to reach a gold-medal game.
“I’m very happy that we have beaten the European attendance record,” said Jiri Sindler, secretary general of the tournament organising committee. “But I hope we can go even higher and reach the world record.
“Women’s hockey is getting more and more popular in Czechia and we are proving that here. I hope that an event like this is hoping to strengthen the appeal of the women’s game around the world.”
Not surprisingly, the biggest crowds have been for games involving the host nation. All three of Czechia’s games have been 5,869 sell-outs as Ceske Budejovice gets behind its national team. But there is also interest in the rest of the tournament: Canada and the USA had 5,538 for their heavyweight clash, the Group B encounter between Norway and Germany also attracted a 5,000+ attendance on Saturday afternoon and even the typically hard-to-sell 11am starts have attracted encouraging crowds amid efforts to promote the tournament in local schools.
The next target for the organisers is the all-time Women’s World Championship attendance record. That was set in 2007 in Winnipeg, Canada, when 119,231 fans saw 20 games as Hayley Wickenheiser led the host nation to a ninth gold medal. This year’s tournament has 10 teams, compared with eight that year, and the expanded format means 29 games rather than 20 – bringing the record into view.
“I guess we can probably reach 120,000 spectators here in the arena by the end of the tournament,” Sindler added. “It’s only halfway so we will see what happens, but I hope we can get there.”
The remaining Czech group-stage game against Canada is already sold out, as are next Sunday’s medal games. And it’s standing room only for Saturday’s semi-finals, so the optimism seems well-founded.
If it happens, a Women’s Worlds attendance record would see Ceske Budejovice repeat the success of Prague and Ostrava, hosts of last year’s record-breaking Men’s World Championship. And that would surely add even more weight to the popular local boast that Czechia has the most passionate hockey fans in the world.
There are still tickets available for many of the remaining games. For details of the latest availability, and to book your place, visit the official ticket sales website.