The Under-20 Ice Hockey World Championship is a financially very profitable event for the state of Minnesota. Teams and competition guests leave tens of millions of dollars in the area.
The 3M arena in Minneapolis is the second venue of the World Cup tournament. TIMO KUNNARI
29 matches are played in 11 days at the Under-20 World Cup. The tournament will now be played for the 50th time overall and the seventh time in the United States.
The state of Minnesota has only hosted the tournament once before.
The game cities this time are Minneapolis and St. Paul, which are called the Twin Cities.
The tournament leaves a nice amount of money for the host cities and the region.
– The event is expected to have 75 million dollars [noin 64 miljoonan euron] economic impact on cities, says CEO of Minnesota Sports and Events Wendy Blackshaw.
– The assessment is probably cautious. The event brings Minnesota international visibility. The games are televised to different parts of the world, which is fantastic, Blackshaw continues to Kstp.com.
– The benefit of the event is planned to be about 75 million dollars for this region, says the CEO of Visit St. Paul Jaimee Lucke Hendrikson.
– Typically, this time is quiet in terms of tourism. Hotel occupancy is normally around 20 percent at this time of the year. Now we expect tens of thousands of competition guests to fill the hotels, Hendrikson continues.
Long trips
The Finnish team left for the World Cup on December 15. Tiia Mahkonen / AOP
Many of the competition teams came to Minnesota already a couple of weeks before the start of the tournament and held their training camps in different parts of the state.
The Young Lions arrived in the city of Duluth already on December 15 and trained there for 10 days. The Finnish team’s journey to the competition lasts 23 days.
The American and German teams also held their World Cup camp in Duluth. The teams lived in the same hotel as Finland and trained in the same hall.
Turku is the second host city of the 2028 World Youth Championship. Jaakko Stenroos / AOP
The next under-20 World Cup tournament will be played in Canada and two years later in Finland. In Finland, the games will start on December 26, 2027. The game cities are Tampere and Turku.
In Finland, you should be aware of this issue well in advance, as it is better to attract teams to training camps on site before the start of the tournament.
The millions that come from the sports event are certainly good for both Turku and Tampere – and other cities in Finland as well.
– Campsites will start to be applied for in the near future. Teams have their own experiences and desires. Many people want to go to Vierumäki. Kisakallio is another popular place, says Sami Kauhanen, CEO of the Finnish Ice Hockey Association.
– The budget for the under-20 World Cup tournament is about 15 percent of the budget for the men’s games. The tournament needs about 5,500 accommodation days. This includes the teams, the International Hockey Federation staff and the referees. The figure does not yet include any race tourists, Kauhanen clarifies.
The last under-20 World Cup tournament was played in Finland in 2016. That’s when Nuoret Leijonat won the world championship in Helsinki.
Lions budget
Kimmo Oikarinen is the general manager of the youth national teams. TIMO KUNNARI
The tournament budget of the Finnish team is not secret information.
– We spend about 250,000 euros in total for this Minnesota World Cup tournament trip. The amount includes travel expenses and the training camp with accommodation and meals. The amount covers pretty much all expenses, says the general manager of the youth and women’s national teams Kimmo Oikarinen For Iltalehti.
The Finnish Ice Hockey Federation pays for the violins.
– When this under-20 World Cup tournament is organized in Canada, the Canadian Federation subsidizes the travel expenses to the participating countries. For this tournament, financial support will not come from the organizers, Oikarinen continues.