The Olympics capped off its events Sunday with the gold medal hockey game, with Canada edging the U.S. 3-2 in overtime. The gold medal game was exciting, as the Olympic hockey games were throughout almost the entire Olympics, and displayed entirely NHL talent. The gold medal game also garnered excellent ratings, scoring the most viewers of an Olympic hockey game since the 1980 Miracle on Ice game and 1980 gold medal game with 27.6 million viewers. So the question is, can the NHL translate this kind of viewership of a heart-stopping, thrilling international hockey match up into increased popularity for the NHL, which has clearly struggled as of late to get ratings and viewership?
The answer depends on what the NHL does to capitalize on the Olympics and gain greater visibility for the sport. A great moment like the U.S.’s performance in the games does not guarantee an increased interest in the NHL– just ask the MLS how much its popularity jumped after the U.S. appeared in the World Cup quarterfinals. A lot of the NHL’s lack of visibility and popularity has to do with it’s TV contracts, which put only a select few games on NBC each year, always on the weekend, and put the vast majority of prominent games on Versus with local team games on Comcast or Fox Sports networks of the markets of each team. Needless to say these TV contracts don’t do a lot to promote exposure of the sport like games on ESPN, CBS, or Fox would. The NBC games are few and far between and usually feature the same teams repeatedly (Pittsburgh, Detroit, NY Rangers, Philadelphia come to mind). The NHL’s TV contracts don’t even provide for all of it’s playoff games to be shown on a major network, let alone ON TV AT ALL. What other major sport in America doesn’t televise all of its playoff games– the best games of the season– nationally?
With so little national exposure, it’s no wonder people don’t care– they don’t know the interesting story lines of the season, who’s good come playoff time, or anything about many of the NHL’s greatest stars outside of Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin. This lack of exposure was illustrated when MSNBC spent a lengthy amount of time interviewing an impostor claiming to be Team USA/Buffalo Sabres goalie Ryan Miller who was neither funny nor sounded like Ryan Miller. If one of the NHL’s best goalies can’t be recognized by producers at MSNBC that screams exposure problem.
Now is the time for the NHL to make a real publicity push. That begins with getting new TV deals using the ratings from the Olympics as leverage. The NHL should have at least one game on a night on a network people actually watch, with more games showing on the weekends. It needs to get off Versus and onto a major network. It needs to promote more individual stars like the NBA does in its story lines for the season to get interest in the league. There are guys beside Crosby and Ovechkin– try Jonathan Toews, Patrick Marleau, Chris Pronger, etc. The NHL has a good product– fast skating, hard hitting, goal scoring fun. A lot of people likely realized that over the weekend, but won’t keep coming back to the sport unless the NHL reminds them of its existence and makes viewership easy. And that begins with new TV contracts.
