No NHL on ESPN Counterpoint...
As stated in the previous blog entry, ESPN has opted not to top the deal offered by OLN in order to keep the NHL. (Whew! That's a lot of anagrams!)
While my collegue believes the NHL will suffer due to lack of promotion and coverage by the sports bohemoth, I have to summarily disagree. ESPN had the NHL for years. They promoted it, cross-promoted it, advertised it in their crappy magazine and the end result was still the same... low ratings and a small fan base.
The national cable package on OLN won't do any better or any worse for the league. Why? Like every other sport besides football, hockey does not translate nationally in the US. The changes the league has made will need to be promoted regionally to draw the local fan back and energize the sport. That's where the ratings are and thats where the fan-base will tune in. ESPN, for all their big money contracts and "synergy", simply would have buried the NHL in their line-up among their Little League World Series games and 80 hours of coverage of the World Series of Poker. At least OLN will build their network around the NHL franchise. They'll air more games, feature more teams, and the hardcore NHL fans who want to watch a nationally televised game will upgrade their cable package to be sure they can get them.
This league will have success without ESPN because they don't need ESPN. They need their local fans to watch. The rule changes and the greater league equity will develop stronger regional followings for the teams and that's where the money is for hockey... in the tickets and the local TV contracts. The NHL shouldn't worry about ESPN. They should worry about getting the fans back.
Fans in Pittsburgh will certainly watch in large numbers as Crosby & Lemieux take the ice for the first time together on FSN-Pittsburgh. Fans in Detroit will continue to rack up big ratings for the Wings on FSN-Detroit. And so the story will go for every team around the NHL.
While my collegue believes the NHL will suffer due to lack of promotion and coverage by the sports bohemoth, I have to summarily disagree. ESPN had the NHL for years. They promoted it, cross-promoted it, advertised it in their crappy magazine and the end result was still the same... low ratings and a small fan base.
The national cable package on OLN won't do any better or any worse for the league. Why? Like every other sport besides football, hockey does not translate nationally in the US. The changes the league has made will need to be promoted regionally to draw the local fan back and energize the sport. That's where the ratings are and thats where the fan-base will tune in. ESPN, for all their big money contracts and "synergy", simply would have buried the NHL in their line-up among their Little League World Series games and 80 hours of coverage of the World Series of Poker. At least OLN will build their network around the NHL franchise. They'll air more games, feature more teams, and the hardcore NHL fans who want to watch a nationally televised game will upgrade their cable package to be sure they can get them.
This league will have success without ESPN because they don't need ESPN. They need their local fans to watch. The rule changes and the greater league equity will develop stronger regional followings for the teams and that's where the money is for hockey... in the tickets and the local TV contracts. The NHL shouldn't worry about ESPN. They should worry about getting the fans back.
Fans in Pittsburgh will certainly watch in large numbers as Crosby & Lemieux take the ice for the first time together on FSN-Pittsburgh. Fans in Detroit will continue to rack up big ratings for the Wings on FSN-Detroit. And so the story will go for every team around the NHL.
posted by The Commish at 4:10 PM
7 Comments:
ESPN is a sports network (so they claim) Hence, they won't have it.
I know, I know, HOCKEY A SPORT
What is Johnnymac trying to say?
ESPN wanted the NHL, but OLN outbid them (by around $50M ) and ESPN couldn't afford to match the deal.
I think OLN, an up-and-coming network, will do exactly as June Bug said and build their sportsbase around the NHL. It is sure to be good for NHL fans and for the game.
Now hopefully they hire some good annoucers for hockey and leave Steve Levy, Gary Thorne, Bill Clement, and Brian Engblom free to sell insurance, do the Mets games, provide color commentary for the Stihl Lumberjack Olympics, and be a Hairclub for Men spokesman, respectively.
While I respect JBC's opinions. I still believe that you have to have some presence on ESPN if you want to have any chance of capturing the casual fan.
You guys are all looking at it from the point of view of hockey fans. I'm talking about the non-hockey fan. At least in the past if they wanted to catch a big game they knew where to find it.
You can't use past ESPN ratings as a barometer for how hockey would do if marketed correctly. Some of those low ratings were due to no stars and a boring, defense first product. Let joe beer can watch a good tie game end in a shoot out and see if he likes it. Give people a reason to watch and they'll watch. Look how many people watched that stupid "Dancing w/ the Stars" non-sense.
Also, people always quote the "average" ratings for the ESPN games but what were the ratings for the big rivalry games like Colorado vs Detroit or Philly vs New York.
Lastly, how do we know these "ratings" are even accurate? No one has ever asked me what I watch. Where are these arbitron books and people meters that they draw their assumptions on what people watch from? It seems like the methods they use to determine what people watch is a little antiquated.
Unless ESPN holds some kind of unrealistic grudge, I would bet Sports Center is going to have NHL highlights. How do you think "joe beer can" is going to get interested, by catching some good action on Sports Center and then deciding to watch a game or by saying "Hey, ESPN is showing this game, I better watch it since it is on THE sports netwrok"? I think it is much more likely to happen by way of the first example. Most people that will become new fans will see the highlight reel plays and decide its worth their time to watch a game so they will go find a game to watch. The NHL doesn't want or need the people that stumble across one game just because it was on ESPN and never come back for more. Again, I'll take the money up front and let the regional popularity grow as Ryan has pointed out. The extra $50 million in the TV deal is more than the league ever could dream of making up in marketing just by being on a more established sports network. Comcast is loaded, and if they want to sink a big chunk of their money into the NHL, I say great.
I'm not too sure about those TV ratings either. I remember one time we got a book in the mail to keep track of the ratings and nobody did anything with it. The sample size they use has to be too small to be statistically relevant.
I think that they only people who fill out these ratings books are liberals who watch Ken Burns stuff on PBS, or old farts who watch the lame crime dramas on network TV.
As someone who makes their living from analyzing TV ratings, let me chime in on this subject.
While I too question their execution of the ratings model, Nielsen's (not Arbitron, they do radio)methodology is based on a random sample of viewers who represent the nation and in the case of local ratings, their market.
This brings me back to my original point. If the average Joe wants to sample a hockey game they are more likely to do so (and the NHL I'm sure would prefer that they do so) from their local team. Which will be available to basic cable subscribers around the country on their regional sports network.
The NHL on ESPN is a huge dissapointment, ONL is not as known as ESPN and therefore will not get the same attention the national hockey league was getting while coverage was with espn. I will hope that ESPN might show hockey next year, as the sport gets more popular and is drawing back it's interest. ESPN should be drooling over getting the NHL back on it's network
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