The 2017 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship (5 till 21 May) can register outstanding spectator's interest. In so far 42 of a total of 64 games, 431,000 spectators came into Cologne's LANXESS arena and the AccorHotels Arena in Paris. Out of those, 282,000 spectators attended the games in Cologne. 149,000 visitors saw the games in Paris. The average per game for the main venue Cologne is currently at almost 13,500 spectators, the secondary venue Paris registers an average of approximately 7,100. Thus, Paris is already now significantly exceeding the number from last year's secondary venue St. Petersburg at the 2016 IIHF Worlds in the great ice hockey nation of Russia.

An especially remarkable day was Saturday, 13 May 2017: On this day, a total of 55,239 people came to see the three games in the LANXESS arena of Cologne. This has, apart from special events like the 2010 IIHF Worlds opening game in the Schalke football stadium in Gelsenkirchen, not been seen yet on one single game day at an IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships venue in the modern times of organizing the event indoors only. Further to this, Cologne registered the most visited noon game in modern history of the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship with 17,936 spectators at the game Latvia vs. USA.

Henner Ziegfeld, General Secretary of the 2017 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship Organizing Committee, sees the attendance well on target: "The ticket sale before the tournament gave us good reason to hope for full-house attendances at the games of Team Germany. That's how it came, but what really exceeded our expectations by far, are the extremely high numbers of fans from the other participating nations. They create a fantastic atmosphere at the games. Based on the current attendance development, we do have our original target of 600,000 spectators clearly within range now.”