Ice hockey is Britain's largest indoor spectator sport. It has a long history in the UK and it is reasonably well supported, with the larger teams attracting thousands of fans to every game. The main league is the ten-team professional Elite League, which has featured many former NHL players, predominantly during the NHL lockout season. At the moment the Great Britain men's national ice hockey team is in division 1 of the Ice Hockey World Championships. The team is ranked 23rd in the world in the IIHF World Ranking system.
Media support for ice hockey has improved on a national level, although the majority of news is still found on the internet. Sky Sports has been covering the Elite league for a few seasons, and starting in the 2010/2011 season they will be showing 8 live games and a highlight show every week; the reason this deal happened was due to the elite league attracting very large viewing figures and Sky seeing the Elite Ice Hockey League as a potentially big and popular league.
The Elite Ice Hockey League is well recognised around the ice hockey world, so much so that on 2 October 2010 the Boston Bruins of the NHL took on the Belfast Giants at the Giants Odyssey Arena in Belfast, Northern Ireland