Selling hockey....

I'm all for giving markets a chance, but at what point do you need to give up and admit it's just not going to work? How many dollars in advertising do you need to throw at certain areas before it becomes apparent that it's not working? Sports are very heavily engrained into cultures, hockey in Canada, Baseball/NFL in America, soccer in Brazil and England (and pretty much the rest of the world), cricket in India and Pakistan.... I think that counts for a lot, and I don't think you can just expect advertisments and fancy TV angles to sell a sport. Chances are it'll become popular for a bit, but once that wears off, if it has no cultural roots, it's not gonna stick. The NHL was quite popular in the early 90's, and now we're constantly reminded that the westminster dog show gets better ratings in the US.

Does hockey have the ability to become ingrained in a culture that's not familiar with it? Does any sport? I don't care how exciting rugby or cricket are, i doubt i'll ever care about it, it's just not something i'm familiar with. I might grow to follow football a little more closely, but that's not saying much considering how closely I follow it now. There's no way I'll ever remotely "care" about it.



I'm gonna transcribe something from the conclusion of Roy MacGregor and Ken Dryden's book "Home Game" that I think ties in with this.


"The average American fan (my note : to me, what this refers to is people who have no cultural background relating to the game) sees only the hockey game in front of him - the speed, the collisions - the full power of which never reaches him in his living room. He doesn't hear names with rich, complicated histories. He doesn't see ghosts of players past, games and teams past, a whole lifetime of them, cavorting across his TV screen with every second of the present. He has no childhood stories, no childhood heros to remember. He can see baseball's ghosts - for baseball is America's game. Football might make more sense, might come into fasion, might be better suited for television, but baseball has the history and the mythology. The mistress may be beautiful, but someone else lies under the American fan's skin. That is where the depth of passion lies.
Hockey is Canada's game. Nothing else is, nothing else will be."


Needless to say I disagree with the last couple sentances, but this was written in 1989, so things change.

I think the key word for me there was "mythology". You can't create that, no amount of advertising can.

The real Tropic of Hockey....

It's been a while since I've written here....

I was in Montreal last weekend in January for McMUN. Tried to talk hockey with some Americans I went out for lunch with to get their views on things like fighting and how people regard it, but it didn't go very far. Last year I skipped out on session mid-saturday afternoon to make a phone call and ran into Don Cherry in the lobby.... And then Rob Maclean. And then ran into them again in the elevator after the Leafs-Habs game that they'd just been broadcasting. If that'd happened to me this year, I would have probably tried to buy them a $10 beer at the hotel bar so I could talk hockey with them for a minute. Of course, there was no real chance of that happening this year....

anyway....

I was just thinking earlier that the NHL has lost so much from this lockout that they'll need to do something drastic to make people take notice and hopefully take it seriously, give it some respect and stature. And given the actions of this current administration, they'll probably do something like expand to Las Vegas just because no other major Pro league has done so and then double the size of the nets to increase scoring.
I haven't thought this through yet, and I don't know enough of the specifics to write on any specifics.... but I think a great way for the NHL to regain some stature and profile would be to expand to Europe as soon as possible. This has long been discussed, so I'm certainly not the first to think of it, but I think the NHL should look into it as soon as possible as a way to repair the damage of the lockout. Becoming the first major league to be truly international would certainly be something to be proud of, something no other North American sport can claim. The NHL has little support in most of the USA, but hockey is huge in many places in Europe, the NHL should take advantage of that.
I don't like the idea of 34 teams in the NHL, so if this lockout does force some teams like Anaheim, Nashville, Carolina, etc to look into moving, whats wrong with getting them ready to move to Stockholm, Helsinki, Moscow and Prauge? Those are all major cities in countries with a real passion for the game, and since they'd be the only teams in their whole country, they'd have the support of entire nations. There are a million problems that crop up of course, I'm not even sure if somewhere like Prauge has an arena with more than 10,000 seats for exampel. Or if the citizens of Moscow could afford to attend NHL games at a steady enough pace to warrent a team, though with the right fiscal controls on the game they might be able to. Playoff scheduling between an NA team and a Euro team would be horrible though.... they might have to come up with something really different for that.
And then there's the problem of travel, but if you put four European teams in one divsion with a couple of NA teams and then just have especially long road trips with lots of time off inbetween games (esp if the NHL reduces the season to 72 or 68 games) for the visting NA teams and then for when the European teams come to NA.... it'd be a real pain to schedule sure, and the players might not like it, but I think it'd be doable. And how many European players would love the chance to play in their home countries? Or at least close out their careers there? I'm sure a guy like Forsberg would sign with Stockholm for less than he'd make in Colorado in a heartbeat.
I think pulling this off would an amazing thing for the NHL. It would become the first truly international professional league (apologies to any soccer fans if there are any leagues with international matches. I'm quite ignorant in that area, but there are none to my knowledge) and may spark even more interested in other European countries that haven't quite taken to the game like France, Britain, Norway. And the developmental leagues in these countries would gain money as well, perhaps we might see 12 nations with legitimate chances to win international competitions like the World Cup/Olympics/World Championships instead of the big 7 teams that currently exist. Perhaps the ideal season to launch this would be the 2009-10 season when the Olympics would be played in Vancouver, further bolstering interest in international hockey. That may be a little too early, but I think if the NHL were serious about it and got on it, they could pull it off.

I should post this on hfboards.com to get some reaction....



In other news, my WLU team lost 6-4 tonight, but i got an assist to run my scoring streak to three games. Kinda funny that those are my only three points and it's my longest scoring streak ever even though its in the toughest league I play in.
I was +1 on the night (only on for the single goal actually) but I still think I had a pretty bad game. I haven't played a real game in over two weeks, so I think I was a little out of step yet. Hopefully by sunday's game when we play the same team I'll feel better.