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Post by cigarviper on Jun 20, 2006 19:36:24 GMT -5
NHL TV Ratings Suffer
June 5, 2006 3:45 p.m. EST
Christopher Cornell - All Headline News Contributor
(AHN) - Following the lock-out season in 2004-2005, the NHL has rebounded nicely this year and has achieved many of the goals it set out to accomplish.
The games have featured higher scoring, attendance is up, revenues are healthy and thanks to the new collective bargaining agreement, there's more parity between all the teams.
One thing that hasn't improved from years past are the television ratings. In fact, they've only gotten worse. ESPN declined to renew their contract with the NHL this season, leaving the broadcasting rights to the Outdoor Life Network which usually covers hunting, fishing and the Tour de France.
According to the Washington Post, OHN posted a 0.4 rating for this year's playoffs thus far. In 2004 ESPN's coverage posted a 0.7. NBC's coverage of select playoff games this year posted a 1.1. ABC posted a 1.5 rating two years ago for the same amount of games.
Paul Swangard of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon explained to the Washington Post the severity of the NHL's broadcast situation.
"You look at the playoff [ratings] numbers, and they have been beaten pretty soundly by poker and bowling," Swangard said. "But I don't think this year was ever about robust TV numbers. It was about the gate and about competitive balance. With an economic model that doesn't rely on television, they can make this league work long-term."
Television ratings for the Stanley Cup should get a boost in Canada. The Stanley Cup features the Edmonton Oilers this year. They are in the Cup for the first time since 1990. US ratings could take another serious plunge, however, as the only American team featured is from a small market in the Carolina Hurricanes.
It is also reported that the National Spelling Bee drew a much larger audience than the entire Buffalo/Carolina series. Now, one can draw many conclusions from this reporting depending on which side of the fence you live...you know, like stats. It does beg to ask, if the hockey this year doesn't win over any new American viewers, will it ever? Fighting was long seen as the factor keeping viewers away from the game. Now that that has been virtually eliminated, where are they? If any sport enthusiast that watched game 7 of the finals and didn't enjoy it, well, they just aren't sport enthusiasts. There also has to be some trace of hockey as being a Canadian thing that some Americans just won't accept it as it is. That being said, they didn't accept the Americanized version with puck firetrails and all either. Will they ever? Is this the reason Bettman pushed so hard for the current CBA knowing he had failed in his vision of bringing in big tv money and expanding the market?
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Post by blny on Jun 21, 2006 10:18:18 GMT -5
You can't force people to partake in something that is alien to them. You try attract new fans, and retain the ones you have, teaching the new ones along the way.
Having the great crop of young players we have today is going to help. Crosby, Ovechkin, Staal, and maybe an American or two, will really help sell the game. Only to a point though.
Hockey will likely never be more than a regional sport in the US. Only the northern half of the country sees any amount of natural ice. Of that population, many are inner-city minorities hung up on basketball and hockey - sports they dream about being pros in.
Teams like the Rangers have taken steps to promote the sport to inner-cities, but the problem remains. Of all the sports, hockey is one of the most expensive to get into. That precludes a lot of people. Getting kids involved gets their parents involved. Make fans out of them at the grass roots level and soon you have fans at the pro level.
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Post by Boston_Habs on Jun 21, 2006 11:06:53 GMT -5
You need to be a hockey fan to watch hockey and that's an important distinction with other sports. In Boston there are loads of people who love the Red Sox but aren't necessarily baseball fans. That expands the fan base tremendously. The Patriots enjoy that status now too. By contrast Bruins fans are hockey fans first and Bruins fans second, which is why attendance and interest in the team has stagnated over the years. They are also very parochial which is why I'm sure the Cup ratings were lousy here in Boston.
The comment in the article was right - the league needs to support an economic model that does not rely on television. It's never going to be a money avenue for the league but a necessary tool to connect fans to the sport. The ratings are meaningless and I get frustrated when people say the ratings are worse than poker or women's softball. Who cares? The sport is perfectly viable from a gate/attendance standpoint and that's really all that matters.
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Post by franko on Jun 21, 2006 11:29:20 GMT -5
You need to be a hockey fan to watch hockey and that's an important distinction with other sports. And it takes time to develop fans . . . but it does happen: OTTAWA - Nine years ago, Jeanette Bennett of Raleigh, N.C., couldn't have told you what a puck was, let alone the Stanley Cup.
That certainly would have fans of the Ottawa Senators shaking their heads. After all, this is Hockey Country, isn't it? And this is how they are rewarded? A team with soft fan support winning the Stanley Cup a month or so after fans here had to suffer the indignity of seeing the Senators ousted from the playoffs again?
Bennett, 65, would probably tell them she's sorry about their predicament, but she would also urge them to keep the faith in their hockey team. As she discovered Monday night after her Carolina Hurricanes beat the Edmonton Oilers 3-1 to win the Cup, there's nothing quite like seeing the hometown team become a champion.
"I'm crying [again]," Bennett said yesterday morning, less than 12 hours after the Cup was presented to the Hurricanes as she and her husband, Tom, 75, watched from their seats at the RBC Center in Raleigh.
"It's the most wonderful experience I have ever had," she added, recounting how she was overcome by emotion as the Hurricanes mobbed each other after the final buzzer. She wasn't the only fan crying. "We southerners are a tender people," she explained, adding that many Hurricanes fans, including herself, sang O Canada as well as the U.S. anthem before the puck was dropped Monday.
The couple's son, William, 38, got his parents to go to their first game back in 1997-98, when the former Hartford Whalers franchise was moved to Greensboro, N.C., about an hour's drive from Raleigh. William loves sports, said his mother, and, even though he wasn't big on hockey before the Hurricanes arrived, he became passionate about it immediately.
His parents got hooked, too, and became season-ticket holders when the Hurricanes moved to their new arena in Raleigh two years later.
Bennett says she hasn't taken a team-sponsored course, called Hurricanes University, to learn more about the game. "I think I picked up [hockey] very quickly."
While Raleigh and the surrounding communities have been less than lukewarm in supporting the Hurricanes over the years -- prompting rumours as recently as last summer that owner Peter Karmanos Jr. was going to sell the team -- Bennett says she thinks Carolina's Stanley Cup championship will bring more fans to the arena next season.
The team says attendance during the 2005-06 regular season averaged 15,596, and all playoff games at the 18,730-seat RBC Center were sold out. The team won't divulge how many season tickets it sold for 2005-06, but the Tampa Bay Lightning saw season-ticket sales jump to 14,500 from 10,300 after winning the Cup in 2003-04.
Bennett says the Hurricanes have many diehard fans. She knows some who bought tickets to the first and second rounds even though they didn't have jobs. Her son took two to three hours of vacation time so he could report late to his night job.
The crowd noise at Monday's game was deafening, she said. Neither she nor her husband could hear the other speak. A friend who lives near Raleigh's downtown told Bennett she had never heard "so much horn-blowing and noise."
Bennett has a final wish -- that her fellow Americans were more like Canadians when it comes to hockey. "[Americans] don't give themselves a chance to like it." |
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Post by cigarviper on Jun 21, 2006 13:31:47 GMT -5
You need to be a hockey fan to watch hockey and that's an important distinction with other sports. And it takes time to develop fans . . . but it does happen: OTTAWA - Nine years ago, Jeanette Bennett of Raleigh, N.C., couldn't have told you what a puck was, let alone the Stanley Cup.
That certainly would have fans of the Ottawa Senators shaking their heads. After all, this is Hockey Country, isn't it? And this is how they are rewarded? A team with soft fan support winning the Stanley Cup a month or so after fans here had to suffer the indignity of seeing the Senators ousted from the playoffs again?
Bennett, 65, would probably tell them she's sorry about their predicament, but she would also urge them to keep the faith in their hockey team. As she discovered Monday night after her Carolina Hurricanes beat the Edmonton Oilers 3-1 to win the Cup, there's nothing quite like seeing the hometown team become a champion.
"I'm crying [again]," Bennett said yesterday morning, less than 12 hours after the Cup was presented to the Hurricanes as she and her husband, Tom, 75, watched from their seats at the RBC Center in Raleigh.
"It's the most wonderful experience I have ever had," she added, recounting how she was overcome by emotion as the Hurricanes mobbed each other after the final buzzer. She wasn't the only fan crying. "We southerners are a tender people," she explained, adding that many Hurricanes fans, including herself, sang O Canada as well as the U.S. anthem before the puck was dropped Monday.
The couple's son, William, 38, got his parents to go to their first game back in 1997-98, when the former Hartford Whalers franchise was moved to Greensboro, N.C., about an hour's drive from Raleigh. William loves sports, said his mother, and, even though he wasn't big on hockey before the Hurricanes arrived, he became passionate about it immediately.
His parents got hooked, too, and became season-ticket holders when the Hurricanes moved to their new arena in Raleigh two years later.
Bennett says she hasn't taken a team-sponsored course, called Hurricanes University, to learn more about the game. "I think I picked up [hockey] very quickly."
While Raleigh and the surrounding communities have been less than lukewarm in supporting the Hurricanes over the years -- prompting rumours as recently as last summer that owner Peter Karmanos Jr. was going to sell the team -- Bennett says she thinks Carolina's Stanley Cup championship will bring more fans to the arena next season.
The team says attendance during the 2005-06 regular season averaged 15,596, and all playoff games at the 18,730-seat RBC Center were sold out. The team won't divulge how many season tickets it sold for 2005-06, but the Tampa Bay Lightning saw season-ticket sales jump to 14,500 from 10,300 after winning the Cup in 2003-04.
Bennett says the Hurricanes have many diehard fans. She knows some who bought tickets to the first and second rounds even though they didn't have jobs. Her son took two to three hours of vacation time so he could report late to his night job.
The crowd noise at Monday's game was deafening, she said. Neither she nor her husband could hear the other speak. A friend who lives near Raleigh's downtown told Bennett she had never heard "so much horn-blowing and noise."
Bennett has a final wish -- that her fellow Americans were more like Canadians when it comes to hockey. "[Americans] don't give themselves a chance to like it."Bless her heart, she's right. I fail to comprehend how anyone can watch the final game this year and not get wrapped up in the action. They just have to let it in. God almighty, they just have to let it in. |
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Post by Toronthab on Jun 21, 2006 15:40:13 GMT -5
Now let's see...a rating of 0.4, ...hmmmmm...that's HFLA and two other guys watching in the US. Hmmm...
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Post by CentreHice on Jun 21, 2006 18:01:19 GMT -5
Now let's see...a rating of 0.4, ...hmmmmm... Yeah...come on America....my blood alcohol level was higher than that for that game. |
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Post by Habs_fan_in_LA on Jun 21, 2006 20:45:25 GMT -5
The hockey in the finals was great, but I have to admit that I was less interested in the outcome than if it was a Montreal Edmonton series.
Edmonton and Carolina are two of the smallest TV markets in the NHL. I'm not surprised that it wasn't watched all that much. Still it's better than watching a "D" list celebrity playing poker or seeing how I could lose 50 lbs. after 3 easy payments of $39.00 plus shipping and handling.
You'll lose money overestimating the discerning taste of Americans.
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Post by Toronthab on Jun 21, 2006 22:31:54 GMT -5
Now let's see...a rating of 0.4, ...hmmmmm... Yeah...come on America....my blood alcohol level was higher than that for that game. Heh heh heh |
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Post by habmeister on Jun 22, 2006 5:29:22 GMT -5
i have yet to see anybody close their eyes or stay in their seat when the fights start, my mother is 65 and she's out of her seat throwing lefts and rights, okay maybe thats a stretch, but i've talked to quite a few americans over here at the world cup about hockey and they all say they loved the fights.
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Post by blny on Jun 22, 2006 11:51:58 GMT -5
You need to be a hockey fan to watch hockey and that's an important distinction with other sports. In Boston there are loads of people who love the Red Sox but aren't necessarily baseball fans. That expands the fan base tremendously. The Patriots enjoy that status now too. By contrast Bruins fans are hockey fans first and Bruins fans second, which is why attendance and interest in the team has stagnated over the years. They are also very parochial which is why I'm sure the Cup ratings were lousy here in Boston. The comment in the article was right - the league needs to support an economic model that does not rely on television. It's never going to be a money avenue for the league but a necessary tool to connect fans to the sport. The ratings are meaningless and I get frustrated when people say the ratings are worse than poker or women's softball. Who cares? The sport is perfectly viable from a gate/attendance standpoint and that's really all that matters. That's a good point. Other sports are fashionable in the US. Hockey was that way in LA after Gretz arrived. It brought out a lot of people. They were fairweather fans at best though. I don't know what you do to make it fashionable again, but perhaps Crosby and Ovechkin will have something to say about that. |
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Post by Habs_fan_in_LA on Jun 22, 2006 13:40:59 GMT -5
NHL tv ratings less than cellar.
In the US it trailed bass fishing, trout taxidermy and pocket-fisherman infomercials.
On the other side, I lived in Richmond VA for three months and there were some good hockey players, three rinks, and a core of fans who drove four hours to watch the canes playoff games. (each way)
There aren't a lot of fans, but the true fans support it vigorously.
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