Hockey’s Place in the Sports World

Ed. Note – This is going to be pretty long, but a fairly detailed breakdown of how the NHL can improve. And the answer isn’t fold RATL!The NHL is at a critical juncture in re-establishing itself in the sports marketplace.. With the myriad of young talent in the league, the powers that be could use this chance to enhance market share and draw viewers to what is one of the most exciting, athletic, and entertaining sports in the world. Sadly, based upone what I am currently seeing,  the league is not taking the steps that it should to develop a young, rabid fan base and regain market share that is by all metrics open to the taking.

First off, the news isn’t all bad. The NHL finals rating have improved markedly in the past few years. The NHL has been fortunate enough to have one of the league’s premier franchise’s, the Detroit Red Wings,  and young star Sydney Crosby featured in back to back finals. Although some may criticize the lack of parity, the television exposure points to a growing fan interest in seeing an exciting finals featuring the elite talent in the league.

Second, attendance also is up. Since 2002, the NHL attendance figures have been gaining on the NBA, its primary competition in professional sports. However, in industrial espionage the NBA is clearly ahead, after foisting Gary Bettman on the NHL, who led the league to the dubious distinction of being the only major professional to lose a season due to a labor stoppage.

Finally, in the arrest department – Patrick Kane! Sure, it was only a cabbie for like 2 bucks, but if you’re not getting negative athlete stories you’re not getting any! (I kid, I kid)

Seriously, the NHL is showing advances. Frankly, though, the NHL isn’t growing at the pace that it has the potential to do so. The advent of HD technology seems like a godsend for the NHL. For once, people can follow the puck without squinting (yes, I’m conveniently forgetting the glowing puck debacle of FoxxTrax – which sounds more like a cougar-hunting map than a hockey term). See the below for this Pitino abortion of an idea.

That’s the past – so now we have to worry about the future. Accordingly, I’m going to break down  a list of different things that the NHL should be doing in order to increase its rate of growth, and also maintain its current fan base. Feel free to take pot shots, agree, or debate in the comments – I got the gloves on.

1) Expand Marketing to Minorites – As you can see, I’m starting with the easy topic.

Hockey traditionally has not had the best marketing to minorities, primarily because the game is played by a bunch of white dudes.  That being said, so was the NBA in the 50s, 60s, and look what happened there. The real question is going to be the how, and in this area I’m going to point to my hometown (kinda, sorta) Rangers and some of their efforts.

I should backdrop this by saying I have a partial season ticket plan, and I have noticed a vast increase in the number of minorities at Ranger games, and I think its fantastic. I really, really love the sport, and to see it growing in different areas makes me happy – because people don’t generally look at an African American or Latino and see “hockey fan,” yet at my 3 and 4 hundred level seats their presence has been growing and growing – and the language is so foul up there its good to mix in multi-cultural slang!

If you look, the Rangers are making a concerted effort to bring hockey to predominately black areas of New York. They are huge sponsers of the “Hockey in Harlem,” program, which funds youth teams in the area. Since 1987, over 1,000 youths have participated in the program, and these are the kids that are going to be promoting the sport on a grass roots level. Last year they sent Scott Gomez, Freddy Sjostrom, Peter Prucha, and Nigel Dawes to a fund raiser – granted, none of those players are on the team anymore, but still. Also, Adam Graves is regularly seen working with underprivledged youths – and he’s one of the most popular players in the past 20 years.

Now where are these programs in the rest of the NHL? I’m especially looking at you, Florida Panthers, and you, LA Kings. Miami and LA are really big media markets, with large minority presence. So why not go for them? Ticket giveaways, send players out there, all the things that actually would gain positive press. Have Rick Nash play street hockey with a bunch of kids, get out there and do something. If you want to make the big bucks, show that you’re worth it.

2) Synergy With the Gamer Generation

Ok, have any of you folks played NHL 2009 – it was revolutionary. And ‘10 promises to be even better. So why not use some of that to increase your presence on XBOX Live or the Playstation Network. Offer fun free downloads, contests for tickets, trivia challanges. There are many things that could be done, but of course they are not taking advantage of it?

The key to growth is catching the kids young, so when they have money they can spend it. Get the ratings up, get them to bug their parents to see a game. MLB sponsers a booth at Warped Tour every year (I’m an emo fan, sue me) – and they have radar guns, a batting cage, video games. It sounds stupid, but when I go to shows I’m seeing more and more baseball caps – why not copy it – remember Snoop rocking the Pens jersey in the early 90s? Why not have a celebrity NHL competition – get Edge to play hockey against a bunch of xbox players – winner of tournament goes to a game with him or something – engage people.

3) Cross Marketing –

The NHL has celebrity fans, hell they have celebrity Puck Bunnies. Why are we not using them in TV

commercials Mr. Bettman. The one thing I really have enjoyed is the playoff blogs, where random celebs blogged their team in the final. Everyone from Chris Jericho to Lil’ John (or their PR people, whatever) was writing on the NHL website? The sick part was that only someone who visited the website everyday would even have known about this, because the NHL didn’t get the message out.

So why didn’t the NHL do more about this? I can’t answer it. Are you telling me that a commerical featuring Elisha Cuthbert, Lil John, Edge,  and Kevin Smith wouldn’t  get attention? If you have some people that love the league – fucking use them! Avery’s fines for a year could handle the costs.

4) Social Media

Let the players tweet! NFL tweets are drawing a lot of attention, and if it works steal it. To bring back Avery, everyone from fashionistas to fans would follow him. How many Devils fans would use it to bombard him with taunting “@” messages. I’d also love to hear about what Chris Drury is doing at practice, or how many girls with lots of consonants in their name Alexander Ovechkin is banging. These are the kinds of things that build a rapport with your audience.

Further, use twitter to report news, and don’t hide your damn name. I visit NHL.com quite frequently, and I could barely figure out their twitter address. Why not try to let people find this stuff out? Instead, you have to dig and dig to get information. Make your website a portal stop, and use social media to direct traffic there.

5) TV Deal

Oh boy, this is a big one. First off, let’s talk about Versus. Their next biggest sporting event is the Tour de France. You’re not going to gain respectability with that. Second, NBC – use their Sunday Night football to advertise your show. You can market you’re own programming – get them to do it. The Winter Classic is turning into a great event – you don’t think NBC wants those ratings to continue to increase??

Back to Versus – currently, they are not even being offered by Direct TV – which pisses me off being a subscriber. Way to eliminate 15 million viewers NHL – and this is their out to leave the contract. Hockey’s rating growth is enough where it should be able to get some placement on ESPN  - give them a generous contract just to get back in the major sports sphere.  The Young, extremely marketable stars in the league with name recognition – which has been lacking since the days of Gretzky, Lemiuex, and Messier – is re-emerging. It’s time to get Crosby, Hossa, Lundqvist, and the rest of your stars who are in big markets in front of a camera.

Let ESPN do a “Hard Knocks” style show where you get locker room footage of gameday for a team. People like thinking they know what goes on inside a professional sports team -start giving that access. I used to work at the Nassau Coliseum, and before a Penguins game I watched Malkin and Ruutu play soccer in the basement – that is the kind of thinking that would get people engrossed in the league again.

I’m not saying that the NHL has an easy climb, but some basic steps could really increase their economic viability in a market with openings to advance.

Tags: african american, gamer generation, gary bettman, latino, marketing, media, nhl, ratings, television
Categories: Munchies

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Munchies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.