Making the NHL more popular
George Malik has an interesting article on his frustrating experience of trying to catch the most recent Red Wings game. The game was on Versus (formerly OLN), and while it has been reported that the channel is now in the requisite number of households stipulated in their contract with the NHL, it is still not widely available.
Malik compares this particular Red Wings game to the Monday Night Football game that was taking place at roughly the same time.
As 9 PM hit, ESPN’s two-hour-long pregame routine ended, as did the ever-present music. Without asking customers what they preferred to watch, every big-screen TV was changed to ESPN, and the sound system’s suddenly blaring “WILL PEYTON MANNING EVER WIN ANYTHING? WILL PEYTON MANNING WIN THE SUPER BOWL? WHAT DID HE HAVE FOR LUNCH TODAY?”
The NFL has become the most popular professional sports league in the U.S. so it can be helpful to look at what the NFL does and ask whether the NHL or its fans would want to make the kind of changes that could potentially make the league more popular. First off, one advantage the NFL has is that each team only plays 16 games per season and the bulk of those games take place on Sunday. So each game is hugely important, making it important that you watch the game if you are a fan. With the games taking place on a Sunday, the majority of fans are free to watch the game.
That limited schedule is something the NHL simply cannot do. However a schedule on Versus that focuses on showing games on Monday and Tuesday nights (competing with Monday Night Footall one night and the other night being possibly the deadest night of the week) is not a great way to promote the league to people who are not hardcore fans. So one good way to try and build up viewership would be to show games during times when the casual fan would be more likely to watch. Those times would be anytime between Thursday night (where you are only competing with the NBA on TNT or the occasional NFL game), Friday night or anytime on Saturday (especially now that the college football regular season is over).
With that being said, the relationship with Versus is working. The NHL ranks only behind the Tour de France in terms of the number of viewers who tune into Versus programming. This is according to the Wikipedia page on the NHL on Versus.
[NHL] games rated substantially higher than any non-Tour de France programming that Versus had ever aired in comparable timeslots (rating between 0.2 and 0.3 during the regular season).
I cannot tell you how many times I have been channel flipping and have seen some rodeo event on Versus and thought to myself “yeah, this is way better than showing an NHL game”. The NHL must experiment with different broadcast days and times. Given the increased viewership their programming provides for Versus (and more advertising revenue as a result) it is something both parties should want to pursue.
Moving along to other things the NFL does that the NHL could emulate, how about gambling? No, I am not suggesting the NFL is directly involved in gambling. But they do what they can to facilitate transparency to the gambling industry. How so? Well, they are very upfront about injuries. The league stipulates that each team report injuries, such as the nature of an injury and how serious the injury is to each player and whether or not the player practiced during the week. This information is also very important to people who participate in fantasy sports. By contrast the NHL is infamous about trying to hide this information, only being forthright enough to say that a player has either a lower body or upper body injury. Becoming much more transparent about the injury status of players could help to make the game more appealing to the gambling industry and to people who play fantasy sports. And if people have money on the game, or if one of their fantasy players is playing, they are going to watch. They are also going to want as much information on the teams as possible.
The NHL can also promote the game in some of the same ways that other major league sports promote their sport. The NBA has always had a different set of rules for their superstars, which has helped those players to excel. The joke is if you breathe on one of these players or just look at them the wrong way you will be called for a foul. This preferential treatment helps those gifted players (Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade right now) have even better offensive games. The NBA also does a great job promoting matchups, such as Ervin Magic Johnson’s great Los Angeles Lakers teams when they played the great Celtics teams lead by Larry Bird, or today’s matchups between Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade.
While I do not like the star treatment, I do think the NHL can and should promote games that involve star players, like Pittsburgh’s Sid Crosby and Washington’s Alexander Ovechkin. To the NHL’s credit I did see a Versus ad during an NFL game this weekend. When the Penguins and Capitals play the NHL needs to do everything they can to promote the matchup. They need to advertise that game everywhere they possibly can. They also need to widely promote good press, such as the recent comment from Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban about how every sports fan should watch a Penguins game to see Sid Crosby play. If anything will get the casual fan to tune in it will be to see Sid Crosby go up against Alexander Ovechkin.
The league should also make more of an effort to broadcast high-scoring teams. That has worked in both the NFL and the NBA. Don Coryell’s San Diego Charger teams were wildly popular in the 1980s; both the St. Louis Rams and the Indianapolis Colts have picked up where San Diego left off, fielding brilliant offenses that are exciting to the casual fan. The exact same thing rings true in the NBA, with the Los Angeles Lakers’ “Showtime” teams in the 1980s being very popular. Phoenix is the latest incarnation of high-scoring NBA teams that have captured the sports fan’s attention. So the NHL should show lots of Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Washington, Atlanta and Tampa Bay games.
So those are some ideas. Versus is where the NHL belongs right now. It is a partnership that works for both the NHL and the cable network. Versus gets bigger audiences when they broadcast hockey and the NHL gets their games on cable television. By tweaking the days and times they show games and by broadcasting the high-scoring teams in the league the NHL can continue to grow the fanbase. Being more transparent about the injury status of players also makes the games more appealing to certain segments of the fan base.
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