With NHLers making their return to Olympic ice after over a decade away, excitement and hype are steadily ramping up. But that hasn’t meant that there’s enough excitement to trickle down, as the IIHF World Junior Championship has demonstrated.

In fact, the tournament is drawing attention for the wrong reasons: a lack of excitement. Featuring the best under-20 hockey stars, the tournament has been a breeding ground for some renowned NHL players in the past. But this year, there was a significant shift in how the crowd has been turning out.

A year ago, the tournament took place in Ottawa and averaged an attendance of 18,240 fans. This year in Minnesota saw a sharp dip in those numbers, with Team Canada averaging only about 5,376 across its opening 5 games.

While American fans have been showing up to support their team, boasting an average attendance of 14,000 for its first five games, support for other nations has been tepid at best, with non-USA/Canada games only filling a little over 30% of the arena.

Raising the concerns online, an amateur hockey writer took to X and wrote, “I’ll never understand how Americans haven’t gotten into the World Juniors. It’s basically the March Madness of Hockey. You support the NCAA like CRAZY. High School Hockey in Minnesota gets way more fans than this. Why? These are the best Players outside of the NHL.”

The message was a quote post of another about the quarterfinal between Switzerland and Czechia with an image of largely empty stands: “Not the best turnout for a quarterfinal game between a Gold contender and another solid, medal contention squad.”

The reasons for the low turnout have been manifold: scheduling issues, price issues, and a lack of turnout from Canada have been some of the main ones. Nonetheless, fans quickly weighed in with their takes online.

US hockey fans unhappy with poor support at World Juniors 

One fan reflected on how they feel that it’s highly unusual to not see youth or minor hockey teams attending World Junior games as groups.

The fan wrote, “The thing that surprises me is I don’t see any Minor Hockey Teams in the crowd, in Canada you’d go with your Team after playing your game. It sounds like the IIHF contacted some Teams and offered very pricey ticket packages, IIHF has to realize they can’t price it like in Canada.”

Another fan, too, expressed frustration and disbelief over the lack of crowd engagement with the World Juniors in the U.S. “In Canada, TSN spent decades turning World Juniors into a national holiday: wall‑to‑wall coverage over Christmas break, Canada winning a ton, and sellouts in NHL arenas every time the event is on home soil.”

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Pointing to decades of media promotion, tradition, and success, they highlighted how they have noticed that Canada doesn’t have this problem.

Fans in the U.S. and Canada generally recognize players from their own junior, college, or development systems, but they don’t know many players from other countries.

One X user commented, “The problem is, no one knows anyone on either of these two teams in that pic. They know the young Americans and young Canadians, and that’s about it. Maybe one or two college players on non-North American teams, but that’s about it.”

Adding to that, organizers were hoping for Canadian fans to turn up from across the border, but reports show that tourism from Canada to Minnesota has gone down as compared to the previous year.

Another social media user wrote, “The Wilds best prospect was in this game too…. Like no one was like… “Let’s just go see Adam Benak for a few hours”…. This is a friends and family crowd.”

While the Wild’s 102nd overall pick last year, Adam Benák, is indeed lighting up the tournament, local support for Czechia’s games has been scarce. One reason could perhaps be the fact that many of the round-robin games were played during the workweek, with ticket prices closer to NHL prices than youth hockey. A deal that, for casual fans, isn’t going to sound like a good one.

Another comment criticized how poorly the World Junior Championship is covered in the U.S, criticizing the NHL Network’s lack of quality. “As someone who watches the WJC every year, I implore you to find a way to tune in to the NHL Networks coverage of the tournament. It’s AWFUL! I find ways to watch on TSN because everything from the PxP to post/pregame coverage is so much better. Plus ESPN doesn’t cover it at all,” read the comment.