Updated at 17:53,27-03-2024

World hockey championship cost Belarus up to €10 million, official says

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The Ice Hockey World Championship cost Belarus between €8 million and €10 million, Yawhen Vorsin, chairperson of the Belarusian Ice Hockey Federation (BIHF), said in an interview with BelaPAN.

He said that Minsk had originally planned to spend €12 million on organizing the tournament.

Accommodation, food and transport services for the tournament's participants accounted for much of the costs, said Mr. Vorsin.

"Preliminary estimates show that revenues from tickets to the games totaled some 150 billion rubels," said Mr. Vorsin. "We sold more tickets than we had expected to. We had forecast the attendance rate to be 65 percent [of the arenas' capacity] for the preliminary round and 82 percent for the playoffs. In reality we had an 82-percent attendance rate for the preliminary round and an attendance rate approaching 100 percent for the playoffs."

"We earned €1.1 million to €1.2 million on advertising deals and other contracts with partners," said Mr. Vorsin. "We also earned more than €70,000 on license deals. All organizations that were given the right to use the logo of the championship on their products paid us a royalty of one to two percent of their sales revenue."

The total cost of the tournament will not exceed overall revenues, he stressed.