those who would watch the game anyway would find it on nhlnetwork or wherever. maybe not all of them but most would. the game being on network tv is MORE about the casual fan and new viewers. it's a bonanza for advertisers.

you think NBC feels short-changed because it paid $200m and one of its biggest games of the year is being cancelled? yep. and if this is how the league conducts business, it's going to take a lot of effort to fully earn that $200m and turn it into $400m (for example) when the deal expires.

canceling the winter classic hurts the league's product. period.

http://www.bcsfootball.org/news/story?id=4809833

january 1st is the rose bowl. this year and next two years it will be the date of the rose bowl, and one of orange and fiesta bowls.

with the bcs playoff, competition for that time slot is going to get worse for hockey, not better.

4.5 million Jan. 1, 2011 NBC Capitals-Penguins
4.4 million Jan. 1, 2009 NBC Red Wings-Blackhawks
3.8 million Jan. 1, 2008 NBC Penguins-Sabres
3.74 million Jan. 2, 2012 NBC Rangers-Flyers
3.68 million Jan. 1, 2010 NBC Flyers-Bruins

what % do you think are casual/new?

(casual to the extent that they don't even really follow their local NHL team, if they have one)

i think you're overstating what a big deal it is to have this on NBC. kinda curious how many people are literally just sitting there on the 1st with nothing to do, stumble across something called the "Winter Classic" on their TV (but wouldn't otherwise if it was on NBCS), then become something of a hockey fan.

how is it a ratings bonanza, a cancellation that NBC will get massively BH about, but in the same breath you're suggesting that it's such a weak event for them that they'd replace it with the random.org Bowl?

also like i said earlier, the league and NBC are in year whatever or a 10-year contract, i think they'll understand if the WC gets canceled, and get over it by the time the contract is done.

and i think they make the bulk of their money from the playoffs

no one's arguing that it's not bad for the league to cancel the event.

and re: bowl games

NBC doesn't seem to have the rights to any of the big bowls anymore, do they have any at all?

obviously you can't know. what we do know is that during the worst years (2012) bcs bowls easily had twice the viewership that you cited, and that happened while all of them were on ESPN, i.e. cable.

being on network tv is the bonanza. for the nhl. it's way more profitable to be on a network than on cable.

right, NBC conceived this hockey thing after they gave up the bowl rights. you could say they made a bet on hockey when they couldn't afford any more college football. they have the remaining time on their tv contract (8 years) to extract as much money out of it as possible. if that amount is greater than what they would have made on college football. great! if that doesn't happen, NBC has 8 years to court and get the rights to something else.

cancelling the WC this year makes that task that much harder for the next 8 years, for both NBC and NHL. also considering that Det-Tor at the big house should be hyped out of the solar system, yet it fizzles like the Barclays games without a single ticket sold.

it's not just about NBC swallowing the cost of not having programming on Jan 1st, which is significant. it's a pro sport and a pro league. it needs a big tv contract to be truly viable and valuable.

ETA: in before expansion into the US was a bad idea from the beginning and we should contract down to the canadian-6.

Back in Triumph's day, also mine, New Year's Day was maybe the best sports day of the year because there were tons of bowl games on and little else. Two bowl games is pretty easy to schedule around. It's worse when that day is an NFL Sunday, not sure what the solution is there.

ya but were much better at failing than you

I believe there are still other non BCS bowls on Jan 1. Outback Bowl and stuff like that. It's still way more than just the BCS Bowls. In fact, the Winter Classic is more directly competing with those games. Fiesta and Orange bowls are both night games and do not run opposite the hockey game.

When they first started the winter classic I thought they were crazy to do it on Jan 1....because its such a huge football day and would be impossible to attract most Americans. Alas, I was wrong. Ratings are good and it is a huge celebration and feel-good day for the sport.

If it could succeed against college football before it should still be able to in the future.

I don't think it immediately grabs casual fans. But long-term view to sell the sport and make it attractive. Fringe fans who become bigger fans. Slightly more than fringe fans who become even more passionate.

Fans eat up those jerseys, and the nostalgia, etc.

It's not like baseball has the allstar game to try to win over fans they don't already have. Nobody who dislikes baseball turns it on and immediately goes, "wow. This sport is way less boring than I thought. Now I'm a fan who will watch all year!" But they have the game anyway. Because it is an important feel-good day for the sport itself and its fans, etc.

Hmm looks like I was wrong; there are 6 this year:
Gator (Noon Eastern)
Heart of Dallas (Noon)
Outback (1)
Capital One (1)
Rose Bowl Game (5)
Orange Bowl (8:30)

If you count the Rose Bowl, five out of six of those involve the Big 10. Not as many as years past, I think, but a decent number of games. Still, I don't think it's bad to go against the first four and I don't think NBC is losing tons of money by not putting some other bowl game on instead.

Umm you were only suppose to offer me 43% for putting up all the money.

You are the masters, we are merely students /bow

No, I don't cheer for the name on the back, I cheer for the logo on the front.

wanna buy an AHL or ECHL team? you can probably have more than 50% of the revenue then...

and again, guess this lockout doesn't really bother you then. just go watch your local AHL/ECHL/University/minor/etc hockey team, same difference, right?

don't forget about 24/7, which only started 2 years ago and is a better way to sell the game to casual fans by dramatizing and humanizing it. also hockey gets way better demos than football

I'm not sure how many non-hockey fans watch 24/7. The only people I know who watch it are hockey nuts already. The friends of mine who don't care about hockey I am guessing have never heard of it.

The show is fine and is a nice little boost I guess. Probably more important to the NHL than Hard Knocks is to the NFL. But I feel like the longrun impact is negligible.

NHL Network has a similar show with the Edmonton Oilers young team. And NBC-SN does their 36 hours show following around whatever stars.Interesting for hockey fans to a certain degree but not a big deal.

Flyers fans love the video of the guys dancing in the locker room after a win. Outside the Flyers fanbase I'm not sure anyone cares.

dude you are comparing a show on HBO to a show on the NHL network. of course non NHL fans aren't going to find oil change. jfc. i don't think 24/7 does exceptional ratings but it's still on, so it must be drawing some people in who aren't huge hockey fans

idk what you're talking about, Oil Change was plastered all over TSN, brah!

edit: isn't that where Tambo spreadsheet came from? lulz

Sportsnet

Oil change? Lololololol

It's oil.change. Edmonton is hip y'all.

24/7 is awesome. The WC is garbage. I just don't watch it. Pro sports don't need gimmicks, but the NHL does because of stupid things like having a hockey team in Phoenix and not putting your games on ESPN. And if ESPN bought the contract, they could put games on ABC. I never got the network TV argument. ESPN has rights to a network station as well.

Bettman is far more interested in every stupid gimmick he can run than actually following a sound business model. Yeah, let's put hockey in the south and **** Canada. And of course don't put your games on the most popular cable sports channel in America; that would be silly.

Oh yeah, and move the Islanders to an arena that holds 14,500 for hockey. You really couldn't have had this arena planned better for hockey?

I do not believe that the fact it is still on is evidence that non hockey fans are watching. I don't know if they are or are not. But saying that still being on is proof non hockey fans are watching doesn't seem correct to me.

Are you leveling?

ESPN sucked for hockey. Yes, ESPN is the channel most often simply on, sans audio, in bars, so the NHL does lose out on that audience. The network they're on has changed names twice and is hard to find in another city. However, ESPN had zero interest in growing hockey. ESPN used hockey the way it uses poker now - to patch holes in the programming landscape.

How often do you think hockey would be on ESPN1, now that ESPN has the NBA? Remember that ESPN did not have the NBA through the 90s. The NBA and ESPN make much more sense together. The NBA is a non-regional league - since it's likely that your local team has zero chance of winning the championship, you probably have a second 'national' team that you like. Inter-conference matchups in the NHL are blah - a matchup of Red Wings-Penguins during the regular season is kinda who cares, but Lakers-Heat is a huge deal.

Of course let's also remember that both Winnipeg and Quebec were up for sale and that anyone could have bought them and kept them in the parent cities, but no one wanted to. Let's also remember that Edmonton was rumored to move quite often. The Canadian dollar was doing terribly for much of the 90s and 00s and it was causing a serious problem, even though as I recall, the league matched Canadian dollars for American dollars when it came to paying out player salaries for all the non-Leafs, non-Habs teams. Canada loved hockey, but in an expanding hockey market, it wasn't able to compete. Things have changed, hockey stopped being trendy in the US, and the Canadian dollar is doing far better.

The Barclays Center was planned in the mid 2000s when money was cheap and it was assumed that Charles Wang could get Nassau County to pony up for a new building for the Islanders. The building simply wasn't designed for hockey because if the Islanders weren't going to move there, and it looked like they weren't, who the hell else was going to?

HBO doesn't really release ratings, but hockey does not get great ratings anywhere, ever. So my theory is that non-diehards are watching because if it was just diehards, it wouldn't be on anymore. I didn't say non-hockey fans, because there is an enormous difference. I will watch a Tuesday night game NBCS between the Capitals and Senators. Most 'hockey fans' in the US do not.

"...anyone could have bought them and kept them in the parent cities, but no one wanted to."

This is not true.


"...move the Islanders to an arena that holds 14,500 for hockey."

This may prove to be the best part of the move.

Canada tho