There is a moment, at the start of every home game, when the lights black out and the entire arena falls into a simmering, theatrical darkness. Fans sit breathless and engrossed, in replica jerseys. Spotlights begin to search the ice. Then the spectacle begins…

The Sheffield Steelers is one of the most successful teams in Britain’s Elite Ice Hockey League. They play their matches at the FlyDSA Arena in Sheffield and are known as much for their pregame dramatics as for their form on the ice, though both are enthralling.

A few weeks ago, the team played its season opener, a sell-out, against Milton Keynes Lightning, a club that joined the league last year. Imagine, for a minute, that you are there, with the 9,300 other fans who turned up. Banners hang from the rafters, video screens, which dangle 20ft above the ice, run flashy vignettes that later become popular gifs. As players skate out on to the rink, their names are called over a tannoy system that also blares out music.

They travel as fast as cars, the players, on steel blades half-a-millimetre thick. When they collide, you hear it – a deep thud, like car doors being slammed shut. When they fight, which isn’t unusual, you watch, forgetting yourself, offering encouragement. The atmosphere is carnival-like: half sports game, half high-octane heavyweight bout. There is not the problem of not enough shots, which can turn people off other sports. It’s different to watching the football, fans agree. It’s better than watching the football. They say: bring on more drama.

Ice hockey in the UK is experiencing a peculiar moment of popularity. In terms of live attendances, it has become the most watched indoor sport in Britain, according to the EIHL, and the third most popular winter sport, after football and rugby, games that are played at schools up and down the country. (Ice hockey is not, yet.) This wave of interest is a recent thing, though you wonder, given its meme-ready histrionics: why hasn’t it become more popular sooner?

‘We’re a hockey family’: fans, old and young, soak up the match atmosphere of the UK’s fastest-growing winter sport. Photograph: Tom Martin/The Observer

The Steelers are owned by Tony Smith, a Sheffield-born businessman who more than a few people consider to be the saviour of championship ice hockey in the UK. (He is also the EIHL chairman.) When he bought the Steelers, in 2011, support was in the doldrums and the club was in receivership. Beyond a community of die-hard enthusiasts, few people considered the UK game a worthwhile spectacle. Brits tend to think of ice hockey as enigmatic and inaccessible, hard to play and difficult to understand.

‘When the players collide at 35mph you hear it – like a deep thud’

The Steelers were established in 1991, during a decade of interest in the sport. But by 2011 even the enthusiasts had lost their enthusiasm. Ticket sales fell to a low. The club owed money – to the bus company, to suppliers. “It was so tainted,” Smith says. “Nobody would touch us. I wondered what the hell I’d done.”

Smith and I are talking in an empty corporate suite at the Steelers’ arena. It’s pre-season, a couple of weeks before the league’s opening weekend, and the venue’s ice pad is still missing. He points to where it will be installed. Then he points to the rafters.

“The videotron…” Smith says. “Can you see it?”

The videotron is an almighty black box dangling from the roof. It’s difficult to miss.

“That’s ours,” he says. “Built from scratch, 300 video screens all together. We lower it down on match nights and it controls the game.” He shrugs. “Cost us an arm and a leg. My wife thinks I’m mad.”

The videotron is emblematic of Smith’s vision for ice hockey in the UK: a live-action entertainment extravaganza for the social media age. It screens during games, engaging the crowd, sometimes zooming in on the unlucky fan who’s nodded off. “It’s this instantaneous thing: how long will it be before he realises he’s on the big screen!”

The puck stops here: new signing 26-year-old Canadian Josh Pitt. Photograph: Alex Telfer/The Observer

When Smith took over he found Steelers games boring, and figured the fans probably did, too. “It was a bit like tennis,” he says – terribly polite, a lot of back and forth. He was surprised to see players apologise to each other after collisions. “We were at a level where there was no combat,” he says. “And that’s part of what fans expect to see: two players travelling at 35mph in opposite directions. There’s going to be a result,” and when there is, “everyone in the arena squeezes that little bit tighter.”

Smith turned to other popular hockey divisions for inspiration. “You look at the best league in the world,” he says, referring to the National Hockey League, in North America, “and you ask: ‘How do they bring in 20,000 fans every game?’ Is it the quality of the hockey? Of course. But is it also the giant hot dogs and beer?” Both, he argues. “I knew from day one I had to change the game itself,” he says. But equally important were the off-the-ice trimmings: the videotron, the fan-cam, the dizzying lights, the changing room video stream, the player meet-and-greets, the merchandise (“We have about 400 lines!”); the whole pulse-quickening, shriek-inducing, instantly Instagrammable experience of it all. He had to change the “product”. And then, for the sake of the EIHL, he had to work with other owners to ensure they offered a similar package. (Some already were, but not all.) Smith calls all of this “razzmatazz”, though Paul Thompson, the Steelers’ head coach, puts it best: “It’s theatre, really.”

Unlike Canada, or Sweden, or even Kazakhstan, ice hockey isn’t embedded in our sporting culture, though it once held the potential to be. Enthusiasts argue the first game of the modern era was played by Englishmen, in the 1800s, albeit in Ontario, Canada. The UK set up its first ice hockey association in 1914, which paid near-immediate dividends. At the 1924 winter Olympics, in Chamonix, France, Britain won ice hockey bronze. Twelve years later the team won gold. British club hockey has been around ever since, through periods of boom and bust.

The icemen cometh: Sheffield Steel players practise at the city’s Motorpoint Arena. Photograph: Alex Telfer/The Observer

The Steelers pull in close to 7,000 fans a game and have a social media following in the tens of thousands – a fraction of what a Premier League football team pulls in, but more than many popular lower-tier clubs. Ask an EIHL club owner if they’ve considered the prospect that ice hockey might one day replace football’s place in British culture and they’ll balk, but most understand the current marketability of a meme-ready sporting spectacle held indoors, away from drizzle or torrential rain, as the price of football rises. Steelers tickets cost £15, sometimes £5; a Premier League ticket can cost five times that.

A Steelers fan named Nic, who now lives in Glasgow, told me he started watching hockey when it became too expensive to support Sheffield Wednesday, his boyhood club. About his adopted sport, he said: “I like how fast-paced it is, how aggressive but skilled it is.”

Gary Moran, of the Nottingham Panthers, describes the game as “one of the prettiest sports you can watch. It’s got grace and speed and agility. But it’s also got ferocious confrontations.”

Andy Buxton, who owns Coventry Blaze and also manages the British national team, told me: “It’s end-to-end action. In a single game you’ll have 50, 60, 70 shots on target. You watch an average Premier League game and there might be four.”

Could a British fan explain the particulars of a power play? Or define “back checking”? Probably not, though the appeal of a sport doesn’t often lie in getting to grips with its rulebook.

“Guys can shoot the puck 100mph,” Aaron Murphy, a commentator at Freesports, a free-to-air channel that will screen EIHL games for the first time this season, told me. “When you see defencemen stepping up, blocking shots, it’s superhero stuff. Doesn’t matter how tough you are, there isn’t a pad in the world that will stop 100mph from hurting.”

The Freesports deal, which was announced this year, will bring the EIHL to a wider audience, though live broadcasts struggle to replicate the real-life experience. Nic, the Steelers fan, told me he loved “the entertainment, the music, the intro videos,” as well as the die-hards he sits within the stands. “We’re a hockey family!”

A Cardiff Devils fan named Caitlin, who I’d spotted debating the game with international fans on Twitter, said: “There’s nothing else like live hockey. It’s the cheers after the big hits, the way the building holds its breath when there’s a rush towards the net.” She describes the atmosphere as “electric, right from the puck drop”. “I was hooked,” she said, “from the start.”

Smith likes to describe the first hockey experience as a kind of sporting gateway drug. “We like to think, ‘Just get them in for that first game,’” he says, back in the suite. “And they’ll come back.” Addiction awaits.

Grass v ice: How do ice hockey and football compare?

Average player wage per year:

Premier League Football: £2,642,508

Elite Ice Hockey League: £24,000

Most expensive season ticket

Premier League Football: £1,768.50 (Arsenal)

Elite Ice Hockey League: £513 (Cardiff Devils)

Replica shirt cost

Premier League Football: £50

Elite Ice Hockey League: £65

Most famous player

Premier League Football: Harry Kane, Tottenham

Elite Ice Hockey League: Robert Dowd, Sheffield Steelers

Best film

Football: Escape to Victory

Ice Hockey: Love Story