Swiss National League A club SC Bern tops the IIHF’s annual list of Europe’s top drawing clubs for the ninth consecutive season. Despite dropping by around 500 fans per game from last year, SC Bern is still the unchallenged leader averaging 15,709 fans in the 17,131 PostFinance Arena during the 2009-2010 regular season.

See below the complete listing of the Top-50 European clubs and the top European leagues.

The list is compiled by the IIHF and is based on the numbers submitted by the leagues, which all have now completed their regular-season campaigns.

Second-placed Eisbären Berlin (German DEL-league) is the only among the top clubs that shows an increase from last season. The German champion has for the first time climbed above the 14,000 mark, averaging 14,060 fans in their 14,200 O2 World Arena, 99.01% of the arena capacity.

Swedish Elitserien club Frölunda Indians (Gothenburg) has regained third place with 11,399 fans per game, but the number is boosted by the December 28 game at the Ullevi Stadium which attracted a new European club out-door record of 31,144 spectators. Frölunda has dropped in attendance for the second consecutive year after recording an all-time high of 11,688 in 2007-2008.

The clubs who are playing in the 2010 IIHF World Championship venues in Germany – Adler Mannheim and Kölner Haie (Cologne) – round up the top five positions on the list, being the last two clubs who average over 10,000 spectators. But the Cologne club, playing out of the 18,500 LANXESS Arena, has seen a continuous attendance drop in the last three years, going from 12,711 fans per game in 2007 to the current 10,076.

Russian KHL-club SKA St. Petersburg is biggest climber of the top clubs, advancing from position 18 to 6, thanks to their increase from last year’s 6,614 to 9,400 in the current season. It should be noted that many of the KHL clubs announce estimated attendance figures after each game.

Notable:

• The Austrian EBEL League has for the first time cracked the position among Europe’s Top-7 leagues (average of 3,301) overtaking the Slovak league (2,304) which dropped to eighth.
• The top draw in the Austrian league is Croatian club Medvescak Zagreb that averages 5,843 fans which places the Zagreb team 35th in Europe. The 10-team Austrian league also includes two clubs from Slovenia and one from Hungary, thus only hosting six domestic clubs.
• The Swiss league (average of 6,181 per game) has virtually equal numbers as European leader Sweden (6,190). Russian KHL is fourth at 5,474.
• Swedish Malmö Red Hawks is the highest non-top league club on the list. The second-tier Allsvenskan club is 39th with an average of 5,592 spectators.

Attendance figures in European hockey leagues 2009-2010

Note: 2nd column = 2008-2009 rating