Photo by Paul Joseph/ Sashafatcat on Flickr Creative Commons
The news that the NHL would be issuing an announcement at 1 pm this afternoon spread across Twitter very quickly today. After a few jokes about what the news would actually be, it became clear that the announcement had to do with the NHL and their television contract. As more news came out, it was confirmed that the league has signed a new deal with NBC/Versus to keep their TV rights exactly where they are right now. The deal is rumored to be for ten years at $2 billion dollars.
The NHL tv contract has been a subject of heavy contention amoung many fans for the last few years. The biggest issue is that not everyone is able to get Versus through their local cable provider. NBC itself primarily only shows hockey games on winter weekends after the Super Bowl and the latter rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs. When the contract was up, many fans were hoping that the NHL would return to ESPN. A lot of people are upset that that won’t be happening for the next decade.
I’m not one of those people. I am extremely glad to see the NHL enter into this new deal with NBC. The biggest reason I would not want hockey back on ESPN is because I remember how minimal their coverage of the sport was before the lockout in 2004-2005. For the regular season, hockey was shown once a week. The only time multiple games were covered on ESPN was during the Conference Finals & the Stanley Cup Finals. There are so many other sports given screen time on ESPN, I don’t see how it would be possible for them to give the NHL as much exposure as Versus.
Another reason I am glad to see hockey back with NBC is how much the broadcasts have improved. They’re not perfect, but they have come a long way from looking like they are broadcasting from a local cable channel studio. NBC has also helped to grow the game with their promotion of the Winter Classic. Outside of the Stanley Cup Finals, the Classic might be the NHL’s best property on the air waves. The sport’s visibility will increase even more under the new contract with Versus & NBC broadcasting 100 regular season games. A brand new feature will be the live broadcast of a hockey game on Thanksgiving Day. I have more non-hockey fans talking to me about the sport on New Year’s Eve thanks to NBC’s coverage of the outdoor game. I can see the Thanksgiving game going the same way.
It might not be a popular opinion, but I think that the sport of hockey will always be viewed as a niche sport in most of the United States. If they went back to ESPN, they wouldn’t be guaranteed as much television time just because of the competition with other sports. The NHL has been one of the few sports leagues to see marked growth both following a work stoppage and through the economic downturn. They have grown and become profitable by capitalizing on what makes them unique. I love the sport, but there is no way it would be able to win a ratings war with MLB or the NFL. By sticking with NBC, they are forging their own path and gaining visibility on their own terms. The leagues brass should be applauded for this decision.
[...] you will) they essentially get to be the top dog. Aerys Lightning writer Alexis (not Guy)Â Boucher weighs in her two cents on the deal, and really I have to agree 100%. Give her a read. Filed under 2010-11 Season, NHL Tags: Tags: [...]
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You know, I do joke that Guy is my cousin…
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I mostly agree with you – but just to play devil’s advocate here for a minute: I don’t think there’s any way that ESPN would go back to only showing one game a week if they got the hockey contract now. Besides the quote that Keara Dowd cited in her article on this deal (“Hockey’s hot right now,†said the [ESPN] source. “and we want to get it back, but for the right price.â€), ABC/ESPN is likely going to be hurting for content this fall, with the looming NFL lockout (& isn’t there some possibility of an NBA lockout, too?). Basically, ESPN couldn’t screw hockey over (at least for one year), because it’ll be too desperate for content to fill its programming hours.
That’s one reason I take a bit of issue with your contention that hockey will always be a niche sport in the US – this sort of seems like it might be just the right moment for hockey to make a sustained, forceful push into the mainstream. The zeitgeist seems to be with us, for whatever reason, and that coupled with the probable absence of the giant of US sports, football, leads me to feel that hockey could shed its “4th sport” label now, if it really tried.
Ehh, but then again, maybe not.
Like I said, though, on the whole, I agree with you; I actually think the NHL will get better treatment from NBC/VS now, for the same reasons I think it’d get better treatment than it did before from ABC/ESPN, and I think it was quite canny of the league to wrangle so much money and such a long commitment from the network. As Esther G. noted above, I’m not over the moon about every aspect of NBC’s coverage, and I really do wish VS weren’t such a ghetto network.
In my ideal world, the NHL would cut out the middleman and improve its GamecenterLive offerings to give those of us who don’t want cable or satellite TV the option to stream *every* game online. As it is, we can’t watch any road games of our home team because they’re on local cable TV, so Gamecenter blacks them out! They black out the VS game of the day, too, even though we do not get VS. Very frustrating. We’d rather just give our money straight to the league, and get *all* the content, no blackouts, straight from them! How ’bout it, NHL??
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Sure, hockey is hot right now for ESPN. But what about when football (both college and pro) start up again. What about MLB baseball playoffs in the fall when hockey is getting going again? I doubt ESPN would preempt those games in favor of hockey.
I am very lucky in that I do get Versus with my cable package and all of my team’s games are shown on Sun Sports. Also? I have season tickets. LOL
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Well, I think the hope would be that, by the time football and basketball returned, people would be so in love with the glorious sport of hockey that ESPN wouldn’t be able to marginalize it again. But, yeah, that’s pretty far-fetched. Alas.
My husband & I do have season tickets to see our local team (the Panthers, if you’re wondering – hi from the opposite coast of Florida!), but we’d like to see their away games, too. We are crazed fans like that.
We’re not likely to get cable – it’s too much of an expense, considering how little non-hockey TV we watch. Gamecenter Live is a pretty good happy medium for us – it’s just irksome that it’s so close to perfect but falls just short.
Wah wah wah – I know we’ve got it pretty good, all things considered, and I shouldn’t really complain.
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I know. There are places with snow on the ground and it’s gorgeous here in Tampa. AND I get playoff hockey.
For now anyways.
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I’m in total agreement with you. While I don’t love the way NBC does hockey by any means (Pierre, the interviews on the benches during a game, the way they explain certain things like the viewer is watching hockey for the first time) I like the new deal because it sounds like the NHL will get their due, instead of fighting for air time with all the other sports on ESPN. Plus, I also hate ESPN.
NBC, along with the Winter Classic, and hopefully the HBO stuff, leaves the NHL in a better place than it was yesterday.
One thing that I do hate though about Versus is that I only add it on to my TV service during the playoffs. The channel itself is available not on my basic DirecTV package (which is 150 channels, BTW) so I have to upgrade to the higher package and get like 300 channels. I don’t like the exclusivity of it. It shouldn’t be a premium channel because once the playoffs end, I’m taking it right off my TV service. I’d rather spend my money on Center Ice.
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I’m not madly in love with the way NBC & Versus cover hockey, but they have come a long way. I think a lot of it is gearded more towards the casual fan. But, they have given me Jeremy Roenick this post season. Can’t complain there.
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