Historically, the NHL has been the most marginal of the major professional sports leagues. Confined primarily to Canadian and northern US cities, the league was without a broadcast network contract throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.
Since that time, the NHL has secured a contract with Fox and attempted to increase its appeal by hiring Gary Bettman from the hugely successful NBA as Commissioner, placing expansion and relocated franchises in major “Sun Belt” markets (e.g., Dallas, Miami, San Jose), and devoting much more attention to the marketing of the game and individual players (“Gary Bettman, ” 1996; Taub, 1995).
Although the league continues to lag far behind the other major leagues in national television (approximately $47 million per year combined from Fox and ESPN and close to $30 million from Canadian television) and merchandising (over $1 million in 1993) revenue, the league has recently made major advances in both areas (Taub, 1995).
For example, the money from Fox and ESPN is more than four times the amount of the previous ESPN contract (“TV pays,” 1994). Although household ratings remain low, the NFIL has been good investment for Fox.
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As Fox’s first major sports deal, it provided legitimacy in the sports marketplace. In addition, the demographics of the hockey audience (young, urban, male) are highly-desirable to advertisers (Cooper, 1994; Taub, 1995).
With no network ties in the 1980s, the NHL aggressively exploited cable delivery and became a key component of RSN programming. In fact, the RSNs provided a “lifeline” to the league during the lean television years that, in some cases, extended well beyond rights fees. For example, the Prime
Sports/KBL (now Fox Sports Pittsburgh) RSN advanced money to the Pittsburgh Penguins so the team could remain competitive.
In exchange, the RSN received all local and regional television (including cable, broadcast, and pay-per- view) and radio rights for twelve years, complete control of team merchandising, a seat on the NHL’s Board of Broadcasters (its very existence an indicator of the strength of the sports and television relationship), and a winning team that would attract viewers. In a very real sense, the RSN and the team are explicit business partners (Brugnone, 1995).
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The NHL has been called a “natural” for global expansion (Helitzer, 1996, p. 34). Hockey is played in many parts of the world and there has been an increasing amount of player movement from Europe to the US and Canada and vice versa.
The league has been active in distributing its games abroad through ESPN International and international television outlets, and participates in the Winter Olympics (“Gary Bettman, ” 1996).
Although the NHL is unlikely to ever be as popular or as influential as the other three major leagues across the entire US, the development of new television outlets has enabled it to finally become a major sport in much of the nation.
Indicators of this are the purchase of franchises by such major media firms as Disney (Mighty Ducks of Anaheim) and Viacom/Blockbuster (Florida Panthers), and the replacement of small Canadian cities (Quebec City, Winnipeg) with growing US business headquarters markets (Denver, Phoenix). The prognosis is for continued growth as a mix of a national, regional, and international sport.