EIHL slams the Financial Times

[mark]

Quote: The Elite League would like to place on record our dismay and disappointment at the portrayal of our female fanbase in the recent Financial Times article.

We’re very proud to have an incredibly diverse fanbase watching our great sport and they play a vibrant part in our incredible hockey community.

Attendances across the Elite League continue to rise year on year and we are incredibly grateful for the enthusiastic and dedicated support our fans give every week across all four nations. End Quote

The article, which is behind the FT paywall, claims that the current attendance boom is fuelled by female fans behaving like puck bunnies ( my words ) and they have saved British Ice Hockey.

The increased attendance is a result of a lot of hard work by many clubs over several years, Steelers fans are well aware of the low attendances we had during the Norton Lea era and appreciate the
work put in by Tony Smith to fix that problem. The article is misogynistic, sexist and dismissive of the reasons females may enjoy watching sport, the rise in the numbers of women attending sports
events as demonstrated by the recent Rugby World Cup and Euro Championships is fantastic and should not be dismissed in such a manner. That attitude belongs to another age and only reflects on the
dinosaur attitude of the FT and it's contributors. I don't care if you are male or female, if you support our club and attend games you are one of us, a Steelers fan, gender doesn't come into it.

[Brian]

Absolutely, ……..misinformed and misleading. The author went to Altringham to judge the state of BrItish Hockey . I feel she had an agenda before she went and the story she had chosen to write was already decided on . She then went looking for “proof “, ignoring anything that didn't fit.
Fossier says it all when he states he has “. a different algorithm “,about hockey than she does. In other words , he doesn't agree with anything she is proposing in her argument……and neither do I.
Not sure she understood his words.

[smbmetal]

I've not read the article.

As already said us and many other clubs have worked very hard to get fans through the door which is already and becoming very successful.

I love that ice hockey is seen as a proper live family sport. I'm pleased to hear that more females are attending as they are in other sports.

Not all sports, football for example are necessarily family friendly despite having family areas etc.

The more the merrier for me. Pleased that the EIHL has responded to the article officially.

Wonder how much ice hockey knowledge the journalist had?

[Jayboy]

I've not read the article.

As already said us and many other clubs have worked very hard to get fans through the door which is already and becoming very successful.

I love that ice hockey is seen as a proper live family sport. I'm pleased to hear that more females are attending as they are in other sports.

Not all sports, football for example are necessarily family friendly despite having family areas etc.

The more the merrier for me. Pleased that the EIHL has responded to the article officially.

Wonder how much ice hockey knowledge the journalist had?

By the sounds of it, absolutely zero.

[Jayboy]

I am not often at a loss for words, but I am tonight after reading that utter garbage...
I urge you guys to read it... its got to be the very worst bit of fantasy ever written about British hockey ever published...

[Jayboy]

You can read the entire article here:

I know all opinions are valid, but I am struggling to see anything that redeems this utter drivel..

https://archive.ph/Pqtki

Just a few of the quotes of Social media: (the ones I could repeat)

From what’s going around Twitter is those asked to be part of this weren’t actually asked about the novels in the interviews. Apparently they were asked to be in a piece about female involvement in hockey and it somehow turned into that.

Seems like a really poor piece of journalism, the league even put out a statement on twitter about it

I was one of the people interviewed. We were told it was only about woman and our love for ice hockey as a sport. We were never told it would be anything otherwise. Our words were twisted, put out of context and changed. It’s been very upsetting for me and others that were interviewed

I’m one of the girls who was in this article and my god we were told it was going to be an empowering piece about women becoming fans of ice hockey. She said the same to our club. At no stage were we told it would be focused so heavily on sexualisation and hockey romance. I like a good hockey romance BECAUSE I like hockey, but I don’t go to the games expecting to be the love of their lives or perv on them “gyrating”. It’s really upset me and I can quite literally prove none of us said the crap she’s put. Nobody has a spreadsheet, nobody likens them to playing with dolls, nobody makes “intimate” gifts. We were manipulated and I’ll be complaining to the FT tomorrow because we deserved better.

Have the @FT responded to the the drivel that was written about Ice Hockey yet?
If not they need to. This will not be dropped until they do.

Terrible piece of reporting by Kitty Drake, who seems to know nothing about sport but ironically also writes for a feminist magazine on the side.

Reducing female ice hockey fans to the sexist stereotypes of romance-hungry puck bunnies is a simple, sad game. Shame on the Financial Times for printing this.

It also does a disservice to all the hard work by ice hockey at a club, league and national organisation level to build the game and bring in new fans. I'm glad to see the league and Ice Hockey UK pushing back strongly.

The fact a woman wrote this is insane to me, way to bring women down but yeh I think it's complete bs

British Ice Hockey Leaders Slam Financial Times' Sexist Portrayal of Female Fans
The Financial Times article 'How romance readers rescued British ice hockey' attributes the rise in female fans to romance novels

[Keith Sheppard]

After digging around re Kitty Drake, it appears a common thread in many of her past articles relates to peoples sexual activities. Re reading her ‘hockey’ article it’s obvious she had a pre conceived agenda and a specific focus on linking ‘Romantic fiction’ to female hockey fans. With this in mind it’s hardly surprising it turned out the way it did.
I feel sorry for the people who she interviewed from the various clubs mentioned, what they told her would probably have been cherry picked to fit her narrative. Sadly it will probably make organisations like the EIHL a little more reticent to engage with journalists in the future. One can only hope that the age old saying about newspapers applies in this instance to her article….‘today’s newspaper, tomorrow’s chip paper.’

[Al Murrays Hairbrush]

Thanks for finding a way past the paywall.
As for the article, utter drivel. Would she do an article like that on Rugby Union, tradionally a more "middle / upper" class sport.
You can see on the Rugby coverage there's a high proportion of women in those crowds, are they there due to liking men in shorts and reading romance novels?
My Aunt has followed Quins, home, away, europe, and the England & Lions world tours, yep she's that bloody rich.
I can 100% guarantee a romance novel hasn't been near her in over 50Yrs.