USA

Bandy in the more ancient form was played in North America as early as the mid 1800's, but the difficulty to find large enough pitches meant that the sport evolved into what we now know as ice-hockey. Bandy was virtually unknown until 1973, when the American Softball Association started discussions with the International Bandy Federation regarding the expansion of both sports. It wasn't until 1979 when the first bandy game was played in the U.S. and then it was between two visiting Swedish teams.

In 1981 the first U.S. bandy league started and the U.S. national team made their debut in the World Championships in 1985 and have participated in 8 World Championships (1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997 and 1999). Today, the U.S. national team bandy ranks as the sixth in the world, behind the "big five" (Finland, Kazakhstan, Norway, Russia and Sweden), but stronger than Canada, Holland and The Netherlands. Although bandy has now been played in the U.S. for almost 20 years it has yet to spread outside of Minneapolis/St.Paul.