The NHL All-Star Game was Wednesday night and for the 19 hockey fans left in the United States, it meant a chance to see the game's new, young generation of stars on display. For the casual sports fan, it was a chance to find Versus on their cable and satellite provider boxes.
Regardless of whether you're an avid puck head (thanks NHL Center Ice for burrowing that slang into my head) or not, this game promised to be full of excitement. Almost half of the 42 players that competed Wednesday made their first all-star appearances. That means 20 fresh faces that have never gone through this process before and 20 players that did not treat the game as a throwaway, should-have-had-a-five-day-vacation game. For a league less than two years removed from the cancellation of an entire season, that's vital to the league's revival.
Then again, the league would be reviving a lot easier if the NHL could find a reputable network to broadcast their games. Getting NBC to broadcast one game a week is fine and has worked out admirably, but look at the other members of the alphabet gang. The NFL, NBA and MLB all have major network television deals. The NFL is on three major broadcast companies and two cable networks, while the NBA has deals with cable giants TNT and ESPN, as well as ABC. Baseball is no slouch with their games being broadcast weekly on Fox and on ESPN twice a week.
Versus is a fledgling channel and I like the NHL's idea of trying to grow with a network, but I don't see one known more for bull fights and Survivor reruns growing quickly enough to support a major sport's television rights. This isn't the same situation as when the NBA began broadcasting its games on newly founded TNT in 1988. At the time, Ted Turner was a noted and respected businessman and, two years after adding the NBA, he added the NFL's Sunday Night Football and WCW's Monday Nitro (once the highest rated cable program). Versus has added Mountain West Conference Basketball.
When the NHL came back from its year long hiatus from the national sports scene, having been dropped from ESPN's programming, they had two broadcast choices:
1. Versus (then OLN) offered a 2-year deal for $130 million and a network option for a third year and a promise that they would use the NHL broadcasts to attract the MLB and NFL.
2. Return to ESPN for a revenue-sharing based deal in which the money reaped by the NHL would be indicative of the ratings and success of the NHL's product on ESPN.
Guaranteed money be damned, ESPN is available in nearly 20 million more homes than Versus. It's THE epicenter of sports television and is a symbol of sports broadcasting. The instant credibility alone earned from being on ESPN instead of Versus would have given commissioner Gary Bettman, the owners and the NHL the free, good press that it needed coming off of a cancelled season. If you need any other evidence as to how they would have fared better on ESPN, for game one of last year's Stanley Cup Finals, Versus reached only 610,836 households, almost 40 percent fewer than the number of households the same game reached two years before on ESPN. For reference, the event on ESPN during the Stanley Cup Finals, the WNBA, received higher ratings than game one.
The lack of television exposure leaves an improved product searching for an audience. Wednesday night, Buffalo Sabres' Daniel Briere won the MVP of the all-star game and if you can name me 15 non-Canadians outside of Buffalo who know who Briere is, I'll paint myself in blue and gold and run naked through the Student Union.
Therein lies yet another problem. The NHL's marketing campaign is non-existent, save for the occasional advertisement on Versus for the NHL on NBC. As marketable and talented as the new, young NHL generation is, the league has failed to take advantage thus far. Bettman should take a cue from the NFL and apply the Peyton Manning rule to his young stars. Put Crosby in commercial after commercial until it reaches the point that the casual viewer is unsure as to whether Crosby is a hockey player or a pitchman?Nat least then the casual viewer would know who he is.
Until then, Bettman and company will have to rely on the die-hards, all 19 of us.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
