The 2011 IIHF World Championship Organizing Committee has been striving on with its World Championship presentation in participating countries for the Spring tournament in Bratislava and Košice. Following conferences in Germany, Switzerland, Finland and Slovenia (at IIHF congresses) the organisers of the 75th Hockey World Championship in front of journalists in the reigning champion’s home turf – the Czech Republic.
There is of course enormous interest in the championship in Slovakia, as there is on the other side of the Morava river – something evident in the mass interest in the Brno conference shown by the Czech media. “We were very pleasantly surprised at the interest shown by the Czech media in the 2011 World Championship presentation at the Brno event. There were around 70 Czech journalists present at the press conference who were particularly interested in everything concerning the Czech team in the championship,” stated Head of communication Michaela Grendelová after the press conference.
The championship organizers have managed to sell approximately 172 000 out of a total of 392 000 tickets for the championship - which is to be held in both Bratislava and Košice starting April 29th 2011. This information was presented at the Brno press conference by Michaela Grendelová who also revealed to Czech reporters that in addition to the enormous interest in tickets for Slovak matches there has also been great sales for Czech match tickets. “ The interest in Czech tickets is great. Preliminary D group are still on sale, however we have recently registered increased interest in Czech games. There are only a mere few dozen tickets left for the Czech Republic - Finland match,” Grendelová told Czech journalists, mentioning that there is also great interest in the preliminary Czech Republic – Latvia game. The largest number of tickets are free for the duel with Denmark.
Currently – in addition to ticket packages – daily passes are on sale and the remaining individual tickets will be on sale from the beginning of February.
Grendelová pointed out to the Czech journalists that the organizers will not provide exclusive one country tickets. “Pre-ticketing takes place via the internet and the respective tickets have to be paid for immediately (note: up until the end of last year the7 day reservation system had been in place). When completing the registration the respective purchaser stipulates their home country and from among ‘non-hockey’ countries we have the Dominican Republic, Israel and Afghanistan for example” stated Grendelová.
