The Business Of Keeping Ice Frozen For Hockey Rinks

Over two million people play hockey each year on rinks everywhere from Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado to the pond in my backyard.?

Known for being an expensive sport, I was curious to know how much it actually costs to keep the ice we skate on frozen.

Local Ponds and Rinks

Limited primarily to states and cities north of the 42° N Parallel outdoor rinks are a big part of winter culture where I come from.?

Lucky for us, most of the freezing gets facilitated by the naturally occurring weather in this part of the world. The primary expenses come from building the rink, flooding the ice, heating the warming house, and having someone on-site to keep an eye on the rink and its skaters.

There are, however, some outdoor rinks that are refrigerated, but those are the exception to outdoor rinks and certainly not the rule.?

Here are some estimated costs for each of these primary line items:

Building the rink

• Assuming they contract a construction crew to build the rink, it’ll likely cost around $15k-$25k to pour the concrete slab and build the rink. If they want a warming house this’ll place the cost on the higher end of this spectrum and maybe even push it to $30k.

Flooding the ice

• There are companies that offer “rink flooding” as a service. It costs $550 to dump 600 gallons of water on a typical municipal rink.
• Oftentimes municipalities will use another civil service provider to flood the rink so they’ll only be paying the cost of the water (e.g. $2.06 per 1,000 gallons)
• Assuming a city floods a rink once a week for 18 weeks the water would cost them a few hundred dollars.

Heating the warming house

• A house costs on average $500 - $1,500 to heat in a given winter. Knowing how small the warming houses are, they likely only cost about $300 to heat over the winter if they’re using gas.

Warming house attendant

• $12/hour x 40 hours per week x 15 weeks = $7,200 - $12,000

Miscellaneous (shovels, walking mats, etc.)

• We’ll call it $500 per season

All-in a city can expect to pay ~$30k to build the rink / warming house and then roughly ~$15k-$20K a year to maintain the ice.

Community Ice Arenas

A “Community Ice Arena” is different from a “Local Pond or Rink” as it’s inside, refrigerated, and requires more machines, staff, and maintenance. These can also be a strong revenue center for communities if utilized properly.

There’s an architectural group out of Hopkins, MN called HTG Architects that built a “Rink in a Box” architectural model which enables communities to build rinks for “just under $6 Million.” Throw in a Zamboni and we’ll call it a flat $6 million out of solidarity to get the rink up and running.?

Congratulations - you now have a rink - now what!?

It takes roughly 1,000,000 kWh (kilowatt-hours) to support the energy consumption of an indoor rink. Knowing the Minnesota average is $0.16/KWH this equates to roughly $160,000 in operating expenses just from energy consumption directly attributable to the ice. Take into account staffing, cleaning, and maintenance of the facility and you’re likely looking at roughly $300,000 - $420,000 per year to run the rink. Yikes!

The good thing is that once rinks get out of their debt obligations many of them can run in the black or even in the green due to ice rentals, some advertising, and local tournaments.

College and Professional Arenas

Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle cost an estimated $1.15 Billion dollars to construct. Luckily for the Kraken, the cost to build the actual rink doesn’t change too much. The extra $1.09 Billion comes from the land, parking, and construction of the facility that surrounds the rink. They need to build thousands of seats, dozens of concession stands, and many fan-focused amenities inside and outside of the stadium that a small, local community would never have to consider.

Refrigerating a rink at the NHL level is similar to refrigerating a rink at the community level. There are some design elements like NHL and sponsor logos that need to be added to the ice, but those same things get added to the ice in local community rinks as well.

Sure, these NHL and NCAA arenas probably need to pay their maintenance guy a bit more than a local rink, but it's a negligible increase - especially when you’re comparing it to the increase in operating expenses off the ice in a stadium of this magnitude.