JONES: Majority of fans Holding onto Tickets for 2022 World Junior Hockey Championships

It is another victory for Edmonton as a welcome the World Juniors international sports event host city.

A remarkable 85 percent of fans that purchased tickets to the International Ice Hockey Federation 2021 world junior championships didn’t ask for a refund.

Yes, most could probably use the money with the present employment situation and market throughout the blend of this coronavirus pandemic and the oil crisis. But most of the people who created a sellout of this then-Edmonton-Red Deer 2021 world juniors decided to hold on their seats for the function that will return, as originally planned, with the same 10 countries involved 2022.

This season’s event, as had been the situation with the NHL’s Western Conference playoff series, either the Eastern and Western Conference finals and the Stanley Cup show in Edmonton, will be held at Rogers Place along with the Ice District bubble with no lovers.

A pub was created to allow ticket holders to hunt refunds and, regardless of the economics, the reality just 15 per cent decided to do so should be considered unique.

“Of people that requested refunds, over half from beyond the state of Alberta,” added Smith, who stated there wasn’t any difference in the proportions between Red Deer and Edmonton venue matches.

And there’s no panic about returning into sellout status.

“We have in excess of 100,000 people who enrolled for the chance to purchase tickets through the lottery we held last season and were not able to buy tickets,” he said.

“Not all fans who registered had the chance to buy tickets, so with over 100,000 individuals to a waiting list, we’ll be in a position after this year’s event to provide tickets to people on the waiting list”

Smith stated the procedure would likely involve a draw in the list similar to last year.

“With the announcement Thursday of our national junior group camp beginning in Red Deer in a couple of weeks after going to Edmonton Dec. 13we look ahead to Alberta once again playing host to the WJC this year, despite having no supporters from the stands.

“Surely, the 2020 world juniors will be a different event but we are excited that the IIHF gave us the chance to host the occasion. The job of our team, the Oilers Entertainment Group in addition to the experience and success of the NHL Stanley Cup event in Edmonton, were the essential assets that enabled us to have the two world juniors in back-to-back decades “

Nobody is more delighted with the incredibly low rate of refund requests compared to Bob Nicholson, the father of the world juniors as we understand it, from his period as the head of Hockey Canada and now both vice-chairman and CEO of the Edmonton Oilers and vice-president of the IIHF.

It had been Nicholson who flew into Zurich and persuaded that the IIHF to hold a Hub City 2021 COVID-19 duplicate of the near perfect Stanley Cup affair, also let Crimson Deer-Edmonton to bump back the event — with fans, next moment — in 2022.

“I believe that informs the IIHF they made the ideal decision,” said Nicholson. “They’re going to have this season event in the best possible circumstances in the area where the NHL had such a excellent success and they now know they’ll have a powerful World Juniors 2022 Live with complete buildings and an exceptional environment.”

The first time around, as was the situation with Edmonton’s Grey Cup sellout recording, the event sold out over a period of 72 hours.

Each seat. Each single game. Sixteen matches in Edmonton. Sixteen games in Red Deer.

The Edmonton packs split up games to the 18,400 chairs Rogers Place. The bundle for the 6.300 available chairs in Red Deer were for matches between Russia, Sweden, the USA and Austria.

While most of the games this year will then be held in Rogers Place, plus two pre-Christmas, pre-tournament matches each team, a new make-up of groups in each group will be determined using the typical formula between the final placing of those teams this past year.

Without any additional competition to provide a new nation in case no relegation around was required this year, the exact same 10 countries will reunite.

The 2012 Calgary-Edmonton event established all of the previous records for hosting the world juniors.