The sport of hockey has come to a tipping point in its history. If the world of sports was a game of poker with the four major leagues the players left sitting at the final table, the NHL may have the short stack but they also have pocket aces with another ace on the board. Six years ago the league was coming off a horribly played hand, the 04-05 lockout, and playing on tilt lost their TV deal with ESPN and ended up on a network nobody had, Versus. But the league has fought back, doing what they can to stay in the game with the small amount of chips they have. After one exciting playoff year that saw the Cup return to an important original six hockey market for the first time in 49 years in dramatic fashion, they were in the middle of an arguable even more exciting playoff with an arguably even more important original six hockey market steaming towards their first Cup in 39 years when that horrible television contract came to an end. One league, the NFL had already folded, announcing a lock-out that almost insured that there would be no football being played when the NHL dropped its first puck in October. Another league, the NBA, the league closest to the NHL in chips and easily its biggest competition, was ready to fold next, a lock-out of their own seeming inevitable. All the NHL needed to do is go all in and the game would be changed, the stacks would become a little more even. Sign a major television deal with a network that will put your games on where everyone can watch them, on a station that everyone who gets cable has, and you are guaranteed an increase in fans. Of course, unlike poker, the NHL has nothing to lose by going all in. With no football and no basketball maybe you win over fans who decided to give hockey a shot because there is no other sport on TV, if not, you at least made your product more available to the fans you already have. The logic seems obvious. A no lose situation for the NHL. So… Gary Bettman folds!
You may have missed the announcement, I didn’t hear about it until a week after it was decided, but Gary Bettman signed a 10 year contract with Versus and NBC Sports to carry the NHL. It was an easy announcement to miss because almost no news service gave it any importance and most of us were busy following our teams fight it out in the playoffs. As much of an idiot as Bettman may be, he at least knows how to keep his mistakes as quiet as possible. What makes the deal even worse is the fact that it increases the amount of exclusive games Versus gets to carry, games you only get to watch on the off chance that you have Versus on your cable package. Last year Versus had 50 exclusive regular season games, for the next ten years it will be 90. Know how you actually got to see the first round and a half your team’s playoff run this year? For the next 10 years Versus gets exclusive coverage of the whole playoffs. I wouldn’t find this so much of a problem except where I live you have to pay more to Versus, unlike channels like ESPN that come with basic service. Nobody I know pays more money to get Versus. So when playoff time comes around, I don’t get to watch my team anymore unless I find more money to spend on cable. How is this good business? Shouldn’t the NHL being trying to get into as many homes as possible? Try getting Versus in a hotel room. It isn’t going to happen. When October comes around and nobody is playing baseball or football or basketball and someone says, “Maybe I’ll try watching hockey,” but they have to pay $10 to $20 more dollars a month to do so, how many people are going to start watching hockey? How about it they just go to turn on ESPN, because that’s their habit, and nothing is on but hockey?
Gary Bettman is an idiot. He has done more damage to the sport of hockey then good and its time the league owners sacked up and got rid of him. He’s over expanded the league to cities that won’t or can’t support the sport. He’s allowed the league’s discipline committee become an absolute joke. He’s time and time again prevented the league from getting the exposure it deserves. There is no way the difference between what ESPN was offering and what he got from Versus was greater then the increased exposure ESPN would give the league. All the cards were in Bettman’s favor and he still ended up making a horrible decision for the future of the league. This was the year that hockey was going to offset the losses caused by the ’04-’05 lock-out, but now they will be no better off the next ten years then they are now. The owners may have a few more dollars in their pockets right now, but nothing compared to what they would have had with better exposure at a time where the other leagues are headed toward lock-out. Bill Simmons once said that one of the best moves David Stern ever made was letting Bettman leave the NBA for the NHL. Not only did it get incompetence out of the NBA offices, but it put that incompetence in control of the NBA’s competition.
Let’s be honest, the NHL is never going to compete with the NFL or MLB. Even competing with the NBA seems like a stretch. Hockey is a niche sport and most of us fans like it that way. That doesn’t mean the league shouldn’t try to capitalize on events that will benefit their exposure. Would a deal with ESPN have made the NHL the number 3 league in America? Probably not. In the short run, it would give people something to watch before football and basketball start back up and who knows maybe some of them would stick around In the long run, it would have defiantly done was make the sport easier to follow for those of us who are fans. We put a lot of time, emotion and money into the sport, the least Bettman could do is allow us to watch our team without shelling out more money. I am also pretty positive that an ESPN deal would have opened the game up to another generation. Kids don’t pay cable bills and they don’t really search out sports, but if you put it somewhere where the parents don’t have to pay more, somewhere the kids are use to going for sport entertainment you will create a whole new generation of hockey fans in America. Gary Bettman proved once again that he is a horrible poker player.
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