Champions Hockey League statistical expert Efraim Larsson returns in this off-season edition to examine one of the interesting stories of the 2014–15 CHL season: attendance. While the numbers weren't as high as were hoped in many cities, others, particularly HC Kosice, reacted quite favourably to Europe's premier club hockey competition. 

by Efraim Larsson

One of the biggest concerns in the first edition of the Champions Hockey League would undoubtedly be the attendance numbers for some of the teams and leagues. However, when examining the numbers closely, you can clearly see that there were some success stories in this statistic as well, and maybe a lot of surprises. 

By a clear margin, the fans of HC Kosice had the best reaction to the CHL. Not only did the Slovakian champions have the fourth-highest overall attendance in the competition, but they were the only team that had higher average attendance in the CHL (4698 per game) than in their domestic league (3629 per game). 

Listed below are all 44 teams that competed in last year's CHL along with their attendance figures – domestic leagues (DL) listed first, followed by CHL and the difference between them (CHLRelDL%) on the far right. 

The CHLRelDL% is a percentage of the CHL AVG compared with the DL AVG. For example, 4698 / 3629 = 1.29457 (= 129.46%).

As you can see, Kosice held, by far, the best CHLRelDL% total. Of the next four teams, two are from the EBEL – Red Bull Salzburg and the Vienna Capitals – and two are from the Norwegian Ligaen – the Stavanger Oilers and Valerenga Oslo. I have a couple of times spoken about the CHL success for the four Austrian teams, and these numbers definitely add fuel to that fire. Salzburg’s CHL average of 2120 was only 34th overall in the CHL, but Vienna’s 4050 was 7th, making them one of only three teams to average more than 4000 fans over four CHL home games. 

In terms of overall attendance, we see that three German DEL clubs – Eisbaren Berlin, Adler Mannheim and the Hamburg Freezers – led the way (see below), but when comparing their CHL averages with attendance in their domestic leagues, these three DEL teams ranked only 23rd, 29th and 31st.

If we summarize the stats for the different leagues, we get the following table. Note that domestic league attendance and average only includes teams that participated in the CHL. In other words, attendance of teams such as Brynas Gavle or Orebro HK aren't included in the Swedish Hockey League total – only the eight CHL clubs.

The Slovak Extraliga does extremely well here since Kosice was its only team in the CHL, meaning the team's CHLRelDL% of 129.47 again leads the way. And again, the EBEL and Norwegian  Ligaen did just fine when including all of their CHL representatives. Actually, three out of the four EBEL clubs made it into the top 10 in the CHLRelDL% column, which again demonstrates the success that the Austrian-based league had in this tournament.

No matter how you look at it, the Swedish Hockey League was tremendously successful in the 2014–15 CHL season. Among other things, the competiton featured an all-Swedish Final game, three of four semi-finalists were from the SHL, and these teams combined for the best winning percentage and points percentage when comparing the leagues against each other. 

However, attendance was one area in which the Swedish clubs lagged behind some of the others. There was one team that stood out a bit from the others in Sweden, and that was the champions, Lulea Hockey. Lulea had an average of 3753 per game, just 128 more than their final opponents Frolunda Gothenburg, but when comparing with the DL Average, Lulea was by far the best SHL team at 74.75 in CHLRelDL% – the Vaxjo Lakers were 2nd with 58.07.

The Czech Extraliga had the biggest difference between its CHLRelDL% bottom and top teams – HC Pardubice (16.11%, worst in the whole tournament) and Ocelari Trinec (14th overall with 70.49%). That’s a difference of 54.38% between the best and worst of six teams. 

Excluding leagues with two or fewer CHL participants, the Finnish Liiga had the smallest difference between its top and bottom team – 28th-ranked Tappara Tampere with 52.08% and 6th-ranked SaiPa Lappeenranta with 75.02% – a difference of 22.94% between eight teams.

Of course, the Champions Hockey League hopes for better attendance across the board in 2015–16, but the numbers show that there were a number of cities and countries that did come out in good numbers to support the first season.