Sidney Crosby #87 of the Pittsburgh Penguins skates with the puck during the NHL game against the Phoenix Coyotes at Jobing.com Arena on November 6, 2010 in Glendale, Arizona.Christian Petersen
For John Collins, the NHL's chief operating officer of business and broadcasting, watching his former employers at the NFL having trouble selling out a football game last Sunday in the heartland of Canadian hockey was a Bizarro World. The mighty NFL, master of its own domain in the United States, was suddenly second banana in Toronto to his current employer, the NHL. It underscored the challenge Collins and the league face, marketing to two very distinct cultures.
In Canada, Collins has learned, hockey is the NFL - powerful, trusted, not to be messed with. In the United States, however, hockey is the media-tech upstart, free to roam the new-media platforms and try promotions such as the Winter Classic or the Season Opening weekend.
"At the NFL they have a very successful formula and it's more a matter of topping it up rather than changing it," Collins told Usual Suspects this week.
"At the NHL, we can look at other options for branding our product like the Winter Classic or the new HBO documentary series on the Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins."
In other words, when you're not being paid a huge rights fee from a U.S. network, you've got latitude to spitball a few new concepts.
Don't be deceived by attendance figures or the low TV ratings for network NHL broadcasts, warns Collins. The NHL estimates there are 40 million hockey fans in the United States; the true measure of their loyalty may only be found through new-media platforms such as phone apps and streaming games or highlights on NHL Game Center Live.
Already, the league is boasting about robust traffic on NHL.com and NHL Mobile since the last playoffs. So how about adopting the NFL's Red Zone concept that sees a dedicated channel flitting from game to game to capture scoring chances and big plays?
"The problem we have there is that TV rights are held by different national or regional networks," Collins says.
So the league is now working to convince its partners to allow a freer sharing of games and highlights across territorial lines as part of the NHL's next network negotiations in the United States (this year) and Canada (2013-14).
In Canada, that could be a costly fight between the private networks and CBC over Hockey Night in Canada. Already, some inside and outside the Corp. and are balking at the $100-million-a-year price CBC already pays for its package of Saturdays and the playoffs.
Collins declined to speculate on whether the crown corporation should be that heavily involved with a private sports league. "Obviously we can't take a position on a political issue, but we're very aware of the tradition and history of the CBC."
With ESPN looking to get a piece of the next NHL TV contract that begins in 2011-12, the NHL hopes to create a bidding war with NBC/Comcast - one that will improve on the modest revenue-splitting arrangement now in place with NBC.
So where will the NHL's televised product be in five years? Collins thinks that 3D might help hockey more than any televised sport.
"We're excited about our 3D product for the Winter Classic and the Heritage Classic," he says.
Then there is the forbidden fruit of predictive gaming - gambling to laymen. While Collins says the league cannot discuss gambling, for legal reasons, in Canada and the United States, live gaming is now a feature of televised sport in Europe. "We're watching it with interest," he allows. You don't say.
Cheese Stands Alone:
At Usual Suspects we appreciate the NHL's efforts to reinvent its stagnant all-star weekend with a fantasy-draft format in which designated captains choose up sides on TV. The only problems we see with the concept is whether being picked by Alex Ovechkin or Sidney Crosby, rather than the NHL brass, make players want to play harder or miss a three-day hiatus?
And has anyone thought of the TV optics for the final stars picked as they are continually passed over on live TV for someone else? Will they become like Mr. Irrelevant, celebrated as the final guy selected in the NFL Draft? Or will we see their baleful expression as the other names drop off the list, leaving them standing, like the cheese, all alone?
Lest They Forget:
Finally, CBC's Peter Mansbridge took time during the Remembrance Day service on Thursday to note the presence at the cenotaph in Ottawa of the Vancouver Canucks, who cancelled practice to attend. There's a lot of debate about Canada's team, said Mansbridge, but on this day there can be no doubt that it was the Canucks.