According to the International Ice Hockey Federation’s official website, average attendance at the Belarusian squad’s home matches during the CHL’s regular season championship totalled 10,538: the best result among CHL clubs. Moreover, our Minsk players held five matches at Bobruisk-Arena, seating just 7,000 spectators, rather than at Minsk-Arena.
Remarkably, after the previous season, Dinamo Minsk was placed 61st in Europe for fan attendance; however, after moving to Minsk-Arena in the winter of 2010, seating 15,000, fan attendance greatly increased. This season, Minsk-Arena has broken its record of attendance at CHL matches four times; the figure now stands at 16,039 (at the second home match in the Gagarin Cup playoff series, between Dinamo Minsk and Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, on February 27th).
Just two European teams are ahead of the Minsk team in popularity. The most attended club is Swiss champion Bern, with an average of 15,856 fans per match. It has led this nomination for a dozen years. Second place is occupied by Eisbaren Berlin of Germany, with an average of 13,946 fans.
Minsk-Arena is the largest indoor ice stadium within the CHL, uniting clubs from Russia, Belarus, Latvia and Kazakhstan. In Europe, only a few cities have ice palaces surpassing Minsk-Arena in capacity: Cologne Arena in Germany (18,000), PostFinance Arena in Swiss Bern (16,789) and the O2 Arena in Czech Prague (17,360).
