20.11.2017

The Thrill of Sports

The locals in Kouvola love sports and thanks to the local teams, it’s easy to get excited and carried away in the stands.

Kouvola and especially the locals living here are very in to sports. This includes outdoor activities but Kouvola has a long history with spectator sports. It’s a time honored tradition in Kouvola to support our local teams and welcome other teams to the city with open arms.

When it comes to the major league teams, the situation in Kouvola is quite unique. Kouvola has a team in the biggest leagues in Finland in ice-hockey, basketball and in baseball. This means that there are exiting spectator sports available all year around and during the busy season, you hardly have any time to visit home at all.

Pucks, hoops and pitches

KooKoo is the official ice-hockey team in Kouvola and the atmosphere is usually through the roof in the home games. The home of KooKoo is Lumon Arena and it’s located conveniently in the city centre. Thanks to this, supporters from other cities are a common sight in Kouvola, when KooKoo faces one of the other teams in Finland.

In addition to ice-hockey you can spend time in the wonderful world of basketball. You can admire all the awesome tricks by Kouvola’s Kouvot in Jatke-arena, close to the city centre. Jatke-arena is also the home to the sister team of Kouvot, Kouvottaret.

During the summer, you don’t want to spend time indoors and that’s when you should head to see what KPL is made out of. The Finnish version of baseball is a bit faster than the American counterpart known around the world, so the matches are always exiting. KPL’s home field is KSS Energia Arena and like the other sports theaters in the city, it’s located right near the city centre. As a fun fact, did you know that baseball is the official national sport in Finland?

After games

If you don’t have the possibility to enjoy the various spectator sports in the arenas, you can also experience the games in one of Kouvola’s restaurants and pubs. Pub Old Tom has long traditions as the go-to-place for sports fans.

After the game has finished, you’ll want to head to the city centre to celebrate. If for one reason or another you don’t feel like celebrating, you can find comfort with good food. With local sports nothing is better than local food and Gastropub Betony has just that.