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Introducing Snap Shots from Snap.com!

Hello NHL Business Blog Readers!

In my never ending quest to ensure that you have the best possible experience on my site, I decided to install a nice little tool called Snap Shots. It enhances links with visual previews of the destination sites, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns or anything else you would like to share with me, fire up an email and contact me at: nhlblogger@gmail.com!

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Peddie Says New GM Will Rule




This is good news for fans. If a GM can't make decisions without having to look over his back, or have it approved by the owner, then that front office will be extremely inefficient. It would take much longer to get things done and that could take away the teams ability to get things done, because a lot of deals happen quickly. You need the ability to act at any second since you never know when a trade or signing may happen.

Also if you have owners or any other untrained people making hockey decisions (e.g. coaching decisions, signings, trades, drafts) the outcome is rarely pretty (the only franchise I can think of in sports where this isn't the case is the Dallas Cowboys). There were a lot of rumours going on about how Richard Peddie meddles with the Leafs and Raptors. He once was accused of chosing Kevin O'Neill as coach over Sam Mitchell, overruling then GM Glen Grunwald. I don't know if that's true, but Kevin O'Neill's one year tenure with the Raptors was a complete disaster. The best way to go is to hire someone that is capable of dealing with hockey operations and then stay the hell out of his way!

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A Marketing Solution for the NHL

I came across a great article yesturday written American Hockey Fan blogger Ritch. He raised an excellent point about promoting hockey by really allowing hockey to promote itself. Letting the game shine through along with showcasing its history. He also posted one of the NHL ads (not part of the "Cup Changes Everything" ad campaign) from the NHL's "Live Every Shift" Campaign. I tracked it down on youtube, it's titled "One Play" :





Now this is an ad! It got virtually 100% positive responses from the users who commented on it on Youtube. It allowed viewers to get a players-eye view of the game since most of the shots were at ice level, connected the NHL to its past in a subtle way by including historical NHL highlights and even touched on the great youth tradition of pond hockey during the winter. It was the game at its purest, completely unadultured by over the top backround music, gimmicky special effects, and players or celebrities spewing adages about how tough and intense the sport is.

When you market something you have to consider the strengths and weaknesses of what you're trying to market. In the NHL's case, it's biggest asset is the game itself! Though critics have said a lot of things about the game, in an effort to question the place of hockey in America's sporting conscience, no one has ever dared to call the game boring. Sports experts, observers and fans may have issues with how the game translates on television, but they all agree that as a live-action event, it is unparalleled. The level of speed, skill and physicality is unlike any other sport. Finding ways to let that shine through and give TV viewers some sense of the experience, is a great way to go about marketing the game.

Unfortunately for the NHL, its players generally lack personality. The culture of hockey, at least publicly, tends to frown upon any form of self-promotion, flattery or anything that could be construed even remotley as egotistical. So as players in other sports wage daily battles in the media through trash talking, crudely cheoreographed touchdown dances and other art forms, hockey players generally stick to their rehearsed (or at least, commonly repeated) lines in an effort to always say the right thing, and stay out of controversy. While one of the pros of this is that they are generally great guys to meet in person and get to know, the con is that many TV viewers find them boring and the media (in the US at least) generally ignores them. If they can't get their juicy scoop from hockey, they'll go somewhere else. As a result, they are left to live their lives in relative anonymity. Another reason that contributes to their lack of personality, is the fact that most of these players grew up in small towns where the amount of attention is a fraction of what they now get. These factors cause many players to become overwhelmed when they are forced to be the center of attention (ie. be in a commercial), and be likeable. Many of them don't really seem to know how to deal with it. All of this makes it difficult for hockey players to have a strong presence the way basketball/football/baseball players do in the media. If you doubt this, just watch the new "the Cup Changes Everything" ad spots with Alfredsson and Getzlaf. They look forced and contrived. Luongo was the only one who was able to do a half decent job.

The solution to this problem, is to market the players just being themselves. Nowhere is that showcased better than when they're out on the ice playing the game they love. This would give the NHL a very unique position of being the only sport where the greatness of the game, not the force of the athletes personalities is what drives the business.



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Friday, March 28, 2008

Fallout From the Roy Incident: QMJHL Pledges to Curb Fights

New Jersey Devils Refuse to Payback Mistaken Money Transfer from Societe Generale

There is a very odd situation developing in New Jersey, where a major French investment bank Societe Generale, is suing the New Jersey Devils for about $500 000 after "it mistakenly transferred in $125,635.13 (all figures U.S.) to the NHL club on Sept.6, 2006, according to court documents. " Apparently the Devils are refusing to give the money back! The bank alleges that they won't pay them back out of "spite, or ill will." owner Jeff Vanderbeek apparently will not even return their phone calls. Sports Industry experts apparently believe the only reason the Devils are really being sued is because is exiting the sports industry. If you can remember Societe Generale was recently supposed to give prospective Tampa Bay Lightning owner Oren Koules a $110 million loan to buy the team, but ended up backing out at the last second.

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Todd Bertuzzi Suing Marc Crawford

The NHL Launches its Largest Advertising Campaign for the Stanley Cup Playoffs: "How the Cup Changes Everything"

Today the NHL launched what is likely the largest and most encompassing advertising campaign in its history, on NHL.com. The campaign features NHL stars Martin Brodeur, Henrik Zetterberg, Jarome Iginla, Roberto Luongo, Joe Thornton, Ryan Getzlaf, Daniel Alfredsson and Roman Hamrlik, talking about the more intense aspects of playoff hockey games and how they are different from regular hockey games because: "The Cup Changes Everything." The Alfredsson ("Shorthanded"), Getzlaf ("Tighter") and Luongo ("City") spots have already been launched, the rest will launch at a later date.

The NHL is leaving no stone unturned as they are flooding as many media outlets as possible with these ad spots. All local and national tv partners (NBC, VERSUS, CBC, TSN, RDS, HD Net and NHL NETWORK), radio affiliates (XM Radio and Westwood One), print media (Sports Illustrated, The Globe & Mail), 30 arenas, internet sites (Yahoo.com, NHL.com, MySpace, Youtube etc) and 1,400 Canadian Cineplex movie theatres are taking part in this campaign. The partnership with the Canadian theatres was likely one of the carrots the NHL got through their sponsorship deal with Scotiabank earlier in the year.

Personally, though I thought the graphics on these spots were amazing, it failed to move me. It seems like thats what the NHL was really after, considering the melodrama of the spots. I thought Alfredsson had a little too much dialogue (it sounded like he trying to get all his lines in before someone cut him off) and Getzlaf was trying too hard. He was almost barking at the end when he was saying: "Thats how the 'K'up changes everything." The melodramatic music was also quite over the top. It seems like whenever the NHL conciously tries to convey the intensity and drama of the game, it backfires and the ads end up being overzealous (ie. the MY NHL Campaign). Of all the three spots launched so far, Roberto Luongo's "City" was the best. Even though his lines were supposed to be pretty charged with emotion (I mean guarding a city??? c'mon!), he kept calm, didn't rush and didn't try to dramatize. He was also aided by the fact that the music in his spot was the most subdued of the three. This all helped his ad come off more authentically.

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Sunday, March 23, 2008

Red Rising: The Chicago Blackhawks End the Bill Wirtz Era, is the NHL better off because of It?

There was a great article in the Chicago Tribune a few days ago profiling the nice job Rocky Wirtz has done turning the Blackhawks around. It talks about the moves he made bringing in marketing guru John McDonough from the Cubs, healing old wounds with former Blackhawks legends and finally getting the teams home games on TV! Surprisingly, he has turned into a bit of a celebrity around Chicago, as crowds at the games often "want his autograph." The article also mentions one of the last interviews done by the late Bill Wirtz, where he revealed that the Hawks had lost "$191 million in the last decade" including a remarkable "$31 million in 2006-07." Rocky apparently doesn't dispute the figures. Those figures are amazing for any sports franchise, but the !!! Whose ever heard of a big league team in one of the big three media markets (NY, LA, CHICAGO) losing that kind of money? Not to rehash old wounds, but the most amazing thing is that nothing was done. The team policies which obviously were not working were not changed. The article shed some light on that when Rocky acknowledged that "as an organization, we carried grudges, and that doesn't help anyone."

One of the greatest ironies is that if this painful past had not existed for the Blackhawks, the League likely would have been far worse off. The biggest reason why the NHL is not considered by some, to be on par with the other major North American sports leagues, is because of the lack of a major national TV deal in the US. Had Bill Wirtz, (or Philip Anschutz for that matter) decided during those pre-lockout days, to spend as much money as was necessary to compete for the Stanley Cup (spending it somewhat wisely of course, not like the NY Rangers) the NHL's television picture would be far different. One of the major reasons why the NHL is in the bind it is in today with respect to television, is because of the lack of participation of major market US teams (particularly NY Rangers, LA Kings and the ) in the Stanley Cup Finals. TV ratings get a tremendous lift from having teams from those markets involved. A major reason, in fact THE major reason the NBA was able to climb out of irrelevancy, and become arguably the most popular sports league in the world, was because the Los Angeles Lakers, Chicago Bulls and New York Knicks were involved in 17 NBA Finals from 1981-2002 (as opposed to 13 Finals from 1946-1981). However, in the NHL, unlike in every other major sport, Wirtz and many of his fellow big market owners decided to hold the line on player spending. While admirable from a business standpoint, it alienated the team and owner from their fans. A bunch of mid-market teams ended up outspending the big market clubs, eventually rising to dominate the league. Colorado (Denver population: 2.4 million), Detroit (Metro Population: 4.4 million) , New Jersey (East Rutherford population: 8931, yes 8931!) and Dallas (metro population: 6 million) were the largest markets to play in the Stanley Cup Finals from 1999-2003. Those populations were a far cry from the 9.5-18.7 million people in the Big Three markets. The most recent Stanley Cup Finals shows the abysmal tv ratings in major markets due to the lack of participation of their teams. US TV ratings, which had been climbing since the Kings and Rangers made back to back appearances in the Finals in 93 and 94, started to slide. Had the Blackhawks been involved in more Finals the ratings would have vastly improved. I'm not saying they would've been at the same level as the NBA Finals or the World Series, but they would've been close.

Then the NHL would've gotten its big network TV deal. If average team payroll spending continued to be 75% of revenues, its still pretty likely the NHL would've had to go through the lockout. But, if like baseball, they were able to curb spending a little, and distribute some revenues to lower revenue teams, then they might've been able to avoid it. There might've been no salary cap, or at least maybe not a hard one. The question is, would the league have been better off? Under that type of a system, the playing field is still skewed towards bigger market teams. Dynasties can be maintained, and it would take a little while to build towards the top. Some Canadian franchises still might not have survived in that type of league. From a business perspective, that type of league may have brought in more money, but from a fan perspective would it be better if you knew your local team had less of a shot at winning it all? Or would you have cared? Since you might get to see the Rangers, Kings or Blackhawks in the Finals every year. Was the Hawks sacrifice worth it?

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Saskin Situation Settled

The Saskin Saga finally reached its conclusion yesturday as Ted Saskin agreed to a $400 000 settlement. Apparently, he had negotiated a 15-month severance package of approximately $2 million dollars in case he was fired. Sounds pretty slick (if not sick) to me. The fact that a Union Head could seize power without following the NHLPA Constitution, convince the players he was worth a ridiculous salary (that was double that of MLB Union Head Donald Fehr according to ESPN.com), and attempt to quell the voices who opposed his hiring by hacking into private accounts to read their emails is disgusting. This isn't even mentioning all of his shenanigans in between, like when he held his so called "secret vote" (whose results he annouced publicly before it was over), exchanged information with the League about his opponents within the union, and attempted to deflect concerns over his hiring by accusing his opponents of just being upset about the results of the lockout. According to some, he managed to cast a cloud of secrecy over the union not rivaled since the days of Eagleson. In a perfect world he would have walked away with nothing. (Actually, he still would have been very lucky considering all the damage he did). Unfortunately that is not the case. At least, the union can now move on and hopefully with strong leadership, have a good working relationship with the League. Something that it has never had.

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Friday, March 21, 2008

NY Rangers Anti-Trust Appeal gets tossed

The New York Rangers got their appeal thrown out of court for their anti-trust law suit against the NHL. Personally, I think this whole lawsuit is pretty ridiculous. By creating 30 "cookie-cutter" websites that allow each individual team to control their own content, the NHL is not hampering the Rangers ability to compete within their own market at all. It simply gives a uniform design, and smaller-market teams who don't have the resources to have certain content (e.g. video, other multimedia, advertisments), a chance to improve their website. In fact, if you consider the competition to be other sports leagues and forms of entertainment, this move likely helps the Rangers and the NHL compete. The Rangers however, seem to see other NHL teams as the competition. I tend to agree with the former line of thinking. Whose ever heard of a Rangers fan switching to the Islanders or Devils because they have a better website? The competition is with other websites such as ESPN.com.

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