ESPN’s Vince Doria definitely stirred the ire of hockey fans last week. In an interview with this site, he attributed hockey’s limited presence on SportsCenter to the sport not generating “a national discussion.”
When I asked John Collins about the comment Monday, the NHL’s COO and Commissioner Gary Bettman’s right-hand man for business and media, took it in stride.
“The national discussion definitely is increasing around the Stanley Cup,” Collins said.
Indeed, Collins and the NHL have reason to feel bullish about the first year of their long-term deal with NBC Universal. The move to televise every playoff game on either NBC, NBC Sports Network, CNBC and the NHL Network has produced dramatic results. Ratings soared with more than a combined 60 million viewers tuning in to watch first-round games on either national or local outlets.
NBC Sports Network averaged 744,000 viewers for first-round games, up 16 percent. Those are the highest numbers for hockey on cable since 2001, when ESPN’s first round coverage averaged 745,000 viewers.
The multi-network platform had an NCAA basketball tournament feel, with viewers switching from game to game. The NCAA comparison went even deeper with numerous overtime games producing buzzer beaters. It happened again last night with the New York Rangers winning an overtime thriller against Washington.
Would it have been the same if the NHL went with ESPN? Probably not. With MLB and NBA games, and the NFL draft on ESPN, the playoffs likely would have been relegated to ESPN2 on several nights, leaving the notion of being second class.
Yep, not hearing so much that the NHL needs to be on ESPN anymore.
Indeed, the NHL made the right move with potential for future growth. Yet Doria, who was ridiculed for his comment, hardly is off base. With the Blackhawks out, there has been zero discussion about the Stanley Cup playoffs on sports talk radio here in Chicago. You’ll be hard-pressed to find NHL discussion outside of cities that still have teams in the hunt. It’s not that way for the NBA.
Also, the league is faced with the likely prospect of having a non-traditional hockey team in Phoenix or the No. 8 seed Los Angeles Kings in the finals. Not exactly the same drawing power as recent West winners: Detroit (2008, 2009), Chicago (2010), and despite being a Canadian team, Vancouver, with its stars and stories, had significant U.S. appeal in 2011. Los Angeles might be big market, but the Kings aren’t the Lakers.
I addressed those issues and more in a Q/A with Collins.
Given what’s transpired, how does the NHL feel about its decision to go with NBC and the NBC Sports Network?
Collins: The thing we felt was lacking from a marketing standpoint was the idea of national scale.
(In 2010), 40 percent of the games in the first two rounds weren’t on national television. None of the Flyers games in the first two rounds were nationally televised. The Flyers were a Cinderella story (going to the finals against Chicago), but nobody knew the stories on a national level. The first time they popped up was in the finals, and frankly at that point, it was too late.
Now we have every game on. We’re able to show the casual fan how unique the Stanley Cup playoffs are. They can see how tough the road is.
It’s been very satisfying. The ratings are up. We attribute that to the way NBC has embraced these playoffs.
Would you have gotten the same kind of treatment from ESPN?
Collins: We spent a lot of time talking to ESPN. There was a lot of interest. One of the deciding factors to go with NBC Universal was that hockey would be the centerpiece of their entire programming (for NBC Sports Network). That’s not to say ESPN wouldn’t have devoted more time to hockey than they did in the past.
But for (the NBC Sports Network), the Stanley Cup playoffs are their focus. They have dedicated all their time to building this platform. They’ve offered us enormous flexibility. They’ve changed their schedule on the fly to accommodate us.
How does the league view Doria’s comments on hockey not generating the national discussion?
Collins: The national discussion around the Stanley Cup definitely is increasing. We hope ESPN will validate it with the amount of coverage for hockey on SportsCenter.
They’ve been pretty good to us in our big moments. They went to the Winter Classic. They’ve been at the last couple of Stanley Cup finals with Steve Levy and Barry Melrose
What we’re working to do is to round out that schedule so that it’s more than the Stanley Cup finals. Now it’s all four rounds of the Stanley Cup.
How does the NHL increase the discussion for hockey on a national level?
Collins: An important step was getting all the playoff games on national television. We checked that one off and go from there.
We’re working to expose fans to our storylines. The power of (HBO’s 24/7 documentaries) is showing fans something they haven’t seen before. Then when you have all the games on, and people discover or re-discover Martin Brodeur or the team aspect of the Rangers. Those stories start to resonate with fans.
Also, we have so many markets where hockey does well locally. In important markets like Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Washington, hockey does better ratings than basketball. Maybe, that will be the case one day in Chicago. It’s another sign of the potential to have (increased) national discussion.
How does the NHL feel about the prospect of having a non-traditional team in the finals?
Collins: Any sport, whether it’s baseball or basketball, would love to have its big markets (going for) the championship. It doesn’t always work out that way.
A lot of myths got broken last year. The idea that you needed two big U.S. media market teams to get ratings. Boston-Vancouver exploded that myth.
We’re seeing casual fans getting turned on to our stories during the playoffs. There are a lot of healthy signs. At the end of the day, the ratings are ratings. If you look at the first year, the Stanley Cup ratings is not the only metric of success. We’ve made a lot of progress, and it’s only going to get better.
Great read!
Ed, I’m honestly not sure where you’re coming from with ESPN2 saying it has the feel of second-class status. At one time that may have been the case, but for several years now it has been a clone of ESPN, showing SportsCenter, Baseball Tonight, MLB and NBA games, among other things. In fact, I’d go so far as to stipulate that key series in the NHL playoffs would be much higher rated on ESPN/ESPN2 than on the NBC family of networks. I believe the fact that after years of ratings growth, the NHL playoffs are just now reaching the levels on ESPN a decade ago testify to that. Additionally, the fact that the NHL just now realizes a multi-channel presence is a benefit testifies to the fact that NHL management is shortsighted and behind the curve.
The NHL is rightfully praising NBC for embracing the NHL, but what else was NBC Sports going to do? Embrace professional lacrosse? Try to boost the MLS? Arena football? NBC had nowhere to go but to the NHL, and even then, the synergy was not present until Comcast bought NBC Universal and integrated Versus into NBC Sports. Also, one of the reasons that the NHL went to Versus in the first place after the lockout was that it was willing to pay a guaranteed rights fee, unlike ESPN, who had been paying a rights fee, and which rightfully wanted a revenue-sharing agreement like NBC had at the time.
Congratulations to the NHL for things working well with NBC Sports, but I believe it is simply not accurate to attack ESPN’s hockey coverage without pointing out that the same results the NHL has today probably would have been achieved with ESPN and a broadcast television partner, and may have been achieved faster.