Quote:
Originally Posted by recentlyJTR41
I know you're a hockey fan and I'm a baseball fan but you honestly think NHL will ever be bigger than MLB? Hockey is the most regional sport in America. Only a few pockets of the country follow it that closely. You know more about it than I do though so you might be right.
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I honestly do. It's trending in the right direction, and quickly. Gary Bettman, for as much as us diehards love to hate him, has done a great job of growing the national attention to the sport. Things like the Winter Classic have been great marketing tools, and attendance is absolutely through the roof in the league. It beat out the NBA in average attendance despite having arenas that naturally have less seating capacity than a basketball court (hockey rinks are much bigger...for example the Blackhawks have a capacity about 1,500 less than the Bulls because they remove seats when they have the rink, yet the Hawks had an average attendance of about 1,500 MORE people per game last year...)
I think it has all the ingredients. Lots of superstars coming to the forefront (Patrick Kane is in McDonald's commercials now, Sidney Crosby and Ovechkin are becoming more household names, etc), it's a fast paced game with a great live atmosphere (
tell me this doesn't look awesome, even though it was a disallowed goal), HDTV is really helping the sport, it's a hard hitting game which can draw in lots of casual fans (just look at how that helped football over time), and it's growing a lot in areas you wouldn't expect (the Dallas Stars have a growing and surprisingly loyal fanbase, the Tampa Bay Lightning do better on TV and in attendance every year, the Florida Panthers have a surprisingly cult-like following, etc).
I think the biggest problem is the deal with NBC that they have, because the NHL and ESPN haven't gotten along for almost a decade. ESPN refuses to show their highlights because of a feud that dates back pretty far, and the NHL refuses to give them any real opportunity to negotiate a TV deal because of it. It's a horrible and immature standoff that I think has held the sport back nationally for YEARS. Not a lot of people know what NBC Sports is on their TVs.
But I think it has the chance to, absolutely, become a major player in the national market. It already is getting closer every year.