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Pictures of the arena

Iserlohner EC Stadion

Near the Seilersee (Seiler-Lake) the arena of the Iserlohner EC, one of the more traditional clubs of Germany, is located. The team had it´s greatest days in the 80´s in the first Bundesliga until it returned into the DEL (now the first league) after an almost endless period of time in the lower leagues. It might be important to add that Iserlohn did not manage to qualify with it´s on-ice performance for the move into the DEL but plain simply thanks to the fact that the DEL had 15 teams and it was decided that 16 would make a nicer number and a more balanced schedule for the rest of the teams (the league had 15 teams the year before and one team always had an off-day each game-day).

The arena of the IEC is more or less what you can expect when you consider the rural area around Iserlohn. 4.500 people fit into the arena which is nicely designed for it´s seize, especially compared to other small arenas as the home-rink of the Hannover Scorpions for example. Parts of the arena were also renewed a short time ago, new bathrooms were installed and the offices of the club were brought up to a comfortable standard.

The view is pretty good from all points of the arena, an exception is the standing-room area behind the goal on the far end of the arena (there is the entrance and a restaurant at the other end).

Besides that there is not a lot to tell about the arena. The team has the dumbest mascot of all professional sport-teams (with an exception of the Columbus Blue Jackets in the NHL) with an incredible embarassing BSE-infected hen running around on the ice prior to the game (hey, it´s not only cows!).

Tickets range from 18 marks for standing-room tickets to 25-40 marks for seats.

Tips for visitors:

Hockey in Iserlohn might have had it´s brightest days in the 80s but with the return of the team into the highest league in 2000/2001 the famous flair of the past will probably return to a certain degree. The fans probably won´t get a very competitive team in the small-market of Iserlohn where sponsors are a lot harder to find than in metropolitan cities as Berlin or Cologne but the choice between a bad DEL-team and a good team in the 2nd Bundesliga is rather easy from a fan´s point of view. You just don´t want to watch village-hockey all your life, even if playing the big boys means a blowout once in a while....

Normally there shouldn´t be problems with tickets, but for games against Duesseldorf, Cologne or other top-teams the attendance might be rather high so that it could once again be smart ot order in advance, at least when you want to have a certain choice (seating for example). There is no online-ticketing as you might already expect, you have to contact the team directly (times might change so I would at least try their homepage and see if some 21th century ticketing has arrived).

Iserlohn itself is a rather small-town, once you´re there it shouldn´t be really that hard to find the arena.

Link to the team:

Homepage of the team: www.iec.de