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NHL at the Brink
by Decius at 5:02 pm EST, Feb 10, 2003

An interesting story about Hockey's financial woes.

I think the big problem here is that hockey isn't tied into the culture in most of the US in the way that other sports are. People play basketball in their driveways. They are fed baseball as young kids, and then they go to high schools that orient student social activities around football. Hockey just isn't as easy as football to go out and play in the street.

There is no easy answer to this problem for the NHL. It will take a generation to fix these numbers, and they will have to make salary cuts in the mean time in order to handle it. They need to promote street hockey and youth hockey leagues.

RE: NHL at the Brink
by flynn23 at 11:56 am EST, Feb 11, 2003

Decius wrote:

] There is no easy answer to this problem for the NHL. It will
] take a generation to fix these numbers, and they will have to
] make salary cuts in the mean time in order to handle it. They
] need to promote street hockey and youth hockey leagues.

you're correct about the cultural significance of hockey in the US. There is none. But the NHL has been aggressive in it's targetting of youth. In fact, the article points out that only 35% of the NHL's audience is over 12. That makes the other 65% under 12.

Youth hockey has exploded all over the country. USA hockey has over 500,000 registered players, and the fastest growing segment is girls and women (with a 600% increase in the last 5 years). Hockey as a whole, is growing faster than even NASCAR in terms of audience.

But the article does show the growing pains, namely financial. You can't pay your players $1.6B when you're total revenue stream is only $2B.

NHL at the Brink by flynn23 at 4:30 pm EST, Feb 10, 2003
The players are making too much money to sustain the league. But there are other rather frightening fundamentals in this article.
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