As mentioned before, the National Hockey League has signed on with the Versus network through the year 2011. This shuts ESPN out of televising hockey through the rest of the decade.
Hardcore hockey fans likely remember the lack of respect with which ESPN personalities treated the game. Any viewer of Around the Horn or Pardon the Interruption knows that the NHL is treated either as a joke or completely ignored — save for incidents like the Todd Bertuzzi hit on Steve Moore, when the NHL suddenly gets a bright spotlight shining on it for all the wrong reasons. By stark contrast, the NHL is treated like a legitimate sport on Versus, a network many neither have nor know how to find. The Versus network virtually inundates its viewers with hockey, going so far as to air hockey-related dramas and movies come playoff time.
What the NHL is doing is forfeiting exposure for pseudo-respect. I say pseudo-respect because the NHL may be treated well on Versus, but nearly every other television and print media outlet in the U.S. treats the league as if it is a minor sport. It’s akin to Ralph Nader judging how the world perceives him by hanging out with members of the Green Party all day — of course he’ll get respect in that niche, but nobody will give him a second thought nationally.
A deal with ESPN, or a split cable deal, would have made infinitely more sense for a league coming off of an All Star Game that drew fewer than one million households and an 0.7 cable rating. Cable networks are the backbone of sports television deals; games during the week on cable networks drive audiences to weekend showcases on broadcast networks. NBA games on ESPN and TNT drive viewers to games on ABC, and to a much lesser extent, baseball games on ESPN drive viewers to games on FOX. At the very least, midweek cable games remind the viewing public about a sport’s existence.
Viewers can’t be reminded of a sport’s existence when the games are airing on a network without legitimacy or enough distribution to properly compete. In previous years, the NHL had the synergy of ESPN/ABC at its fingertips; Thursday night games on ESPN were promotional tools for Sunday afternoon games on ABC. And while the ratings were still low, they were nowhere near the embarrassing level they are now.
And 0.2 is a 100 percent increase from 0.1. The numbers are still stunningly bad for a league still referred to as the fourth major sport. As recently as 2002, the NHL drew a 2.9 rating for a Stanley Cup Final game on ESPN (extremely high for an NHL game on cable). Last year, both Stanley Cup Final games on then-OLN drew a 0.9 rating — a 69 percent drop over the four years. Considering that even the World Series is rapidly descending towards single digit ratings on broadcast television, what will ratings for the Stanley Cup Finals look like on cable by 2011?
It may make NHL executives happy to see their game being promoted as ardently as it is on Versus, but at what cost? What good is promotion and dedication to the game if nobody can see the results?
