It was still a 24-team league 14 seasons ago, when Gary Bettman first became commissioner of the National Hockey League.
It was February, 1993, and expansion teams in Anaheim and Florida would begin play next season. Within a few years, Winnipeg and Quebec City had left for Phoenix and Colorado, Atlanta and Nashville were awarded franchises, and expansion to Minnesota and Columbus rounded out the league at an even 30 clubs. Bettman's American Dream was almost complete.
All that was left to satiate the new commissioner -- who had apprenticed under the wildly successful National Basketball Association commissioner David Stern -- was the Great American TV Contract, a cornerstone to any major sports league's financial success. The problem?
Stern was peddling basketball, which is played and understood across the United States. Bettman's wares were a much tougher sell, both in person and on television, where the puck still moves too fast for American sports fans who somehow never have trouble with a line drive or a 100-m.p.h. fastball.
Come to think of it, they don’t have much trouble with a 1-0 pitchers’ duel in the World Series either.
8 comments:
Hockey doesn't televise well, although I thought the glowing puck helped a lot.
There are two halftimes, also bad for TV.
The players are mostly colorless and well-behaved off the ice.
Last, but not least, the 6-team NHL was a blue collar spectator sport. Its fans had little disposable income. The bigger league never quite escaped that past.
Roller derby was hugely popular on TV until the sponsors figured out that the people watching were incapable of buying so much as a Coca-Cola.
(I was a not very competent ice hockey reporter for about three seasons, long ago.)
This idea of American tycoons coming up with ways of 'improving' sports has become a national joke here.
Budweiser picked up on this when they started sponsoring the football league, and did this highly amusing ad.
Hockey doesn't televise well
And baseball does? C'mon, you can watch a thousand games and never really have a sense of where the ball has been hit.
I think we're close to formultaing a law here. Maybe we can make a fortune as investment consultants. The sports that succeed are the ones where there is mass-howling at the suggestion of even the slightest change. The ones that are doomed are the ones that generate never-ending debate on how to improve them.
Kids can play baseball, basketball, football and soccer almost anywhere with very few props. Hockey, on the other hand, needs an ice rink, something not available in most localities.
Speaking of ice rinks, my nine year old granddaughter was telling us about ice skating at an outdoor rink while on vacation in Vermont and noted that it was kind of rough because they didn't use a Zamboni. Poor child couldn't figure out why we were all laughing.
The only thing worse than soccer is soccer on ice.
Baseball and football work very well for American TV habits because they offer plenty of opportunities to get up for a beer without missing any play.
Ice hockey doesn't.
I'll watch pretty much anything that involves even a semblance of sporting competition (drawing the line at Grand Prix, which doesn't even have a semblance) so on the rare occasions that ice hockey appears on our screens (winter olympics, basically), I find it enjoyable enough. The more you watch, and thus understand the dynamics of the game, the easier it is to follow the puck.
However, I do think there are only so many sports you can get truly involved in - ie. where you get to know all the stats and players and team histories and dramas within dramas.
Flourescent pucks is just the kind of American thinking that led to them giving the movie version of Breakfast at Tiffany's a happy ending. "Let's assume our audience has a mental age of 4 and a half."
The cucumber sandwiches are good.
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