by Dale Nixon
The Nielsen Ratings for the recently concluded NHL Stanley Cup finals, shown on NBC (aka the we-don't-have Seinfeld-or-Friends-anymore channel) and cable partner Versus were abysmal. The numbers normally reserved for a periodic table (SportsBusiness Daily reported Versus earned a 0.62 overnight Nielsen cable rating for Game One of the Senators-Ducks Stanley Cup Finals on Monday night) came as no surprise - given that the finalists were the Anaheim Ducks *(no longer Mighty) and the Ottawa Senators.
But what is perplexing is the way the National Hockey League continues to shoot itself in the foot when it comes to missed marketing opportunities.
According to Sports Illustrated hockey writer Michael Farber, here is what went down:
Al-Jazeera has no one at the Stanley Cup finals, its credential request having been turned down. Given the paucity of non-aligned (i.e. Southern California) newspapers from the States covering the final between the Anaheim Ducks and Ottawa Senators -- the Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, both Denver papers, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, New York Daily News and the Buffalo News have been spotted through three games -- you might have thought the NHL would have been happy to reach a, hmmm, really non-traditional hockey market, but, alas, that didn't happen. Why Al-Jazeera saw the news value in something that, say, the Detroit News apparently hasn't is for deeper thinkers than me.
Now, the fact that the NHL needs to expand the fanbase is obvious. The move from ESPN and ABC to Versus and NBC did inject life into a moribund post-season, if only for the fact that somehow Dapper Don Cherry cleared customs and made Coach's Corner appearances south of the border. But seemingly, it generated little interest in the actual Quest for the Grail, err, Lord Stanley's Cup.
Once a solid fourth in the United States sports rankings, recent years have seen upstarts such as NASCAR and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, along with the edge-of-the-seat exciting PGA and its whispering announcers, carve an ice sculpture out of pro hockey's eminent domain of column inches in newspapers, magazines and sports highlight shows.
Enter Al Jazeera, the television network headquarted in Qatar with several different channels, including a sports channel, and an Arabic-language magazine. Broadcast by satellite throughout the Middle East and in fact the rest of the world, Al Jazeera attained western notoriety by broadcasting videotaped messages from Osama Bin Laden, amongst others. Heady and controversial stuff to be sure, but maybe just the tonic the slushy-soft NHL marketing machine needs.
And what better place to expand hockey's boundaries than the ice-starved but oil-rich arid lands of the Persian Gulf?
As of 2007, the Arabic Al Jazeera main channel rivals the BBC in worldwide audiences with an estimated 40 to 50 million viewers. Al Jazeera English has an estimated reach of around 80 million households. A strong 45% of those viewers are males in the lucrative 15-39 market, precisely the target audience the league needs to reach.
NHL official broadcasting partner Versus, owned by North American cable monolith Comcast, claims to reach 72 million homes. But the fact is twice the number of homes in the United started are tuned in to Flip this House on HGTV (a reality show predictably focused on real estate) than the former Outdoor Network channel, which boasts a show entitled HOLY @#%*! amongst its non-hockey prime time lineup offerings. The partnership with NBC, which broadcast the final three games in the Ducks-Sens series, scraped the bottom of the barrel with the lowest hockey ratings in 12 years. MediaPost scoped the barren ice-encrusted lanscape:
The final game of the NHL Stanley Cup contest between the Anaheim Ducks and Ottawa Senators on NBC pulled in 2.88 million viewers, the lowest in 12 years.
Compared with Game 5 last year, last night's adult 18-49 viewers dropped 29% to a 1.2 rating from a 1.7 number. Game 4 posted similar numbers--a 1.1 rating of 18-49 viewers and 2.8 million total viewers. If that wasn't enough bad news for NBC and the NHL, the third game of the Stanley Cup Finals on Saturday drew just 1.6 million total viewers, the lowest viewership for any finals game since the network began carrying hockey last year. It's not just NBC. The NHL's cable network, Versus, also witnessed a 20% drop in viewership for the first two games of the Stanley Cup versus last year.
While hockey gives NBC some fresh original programming for the otherwise rerun-happy network summer TV schedule, hockey put NBC into fifth place, behind Fox (3.6/11), ABC (2.5/7), CBS (2.1/6) and Univision (1.8/5). NBC was a 1.2/4. CW was next at a 0.7/2.
All the while Al Jazeera and seven potential channels of hockey-bereft viewers sat at home, waiting for a call to action from the NHL media office that never came. Imagine Stanley Cup finals coverage preempting the usual schedule of beheadings and Bin Laden missives. A two-handed slash with a hockey stick would be widely accepted by folks used to the two-handers with a sword sentence given to thieves.
Hockey could definitely thrive in the Middle East, where violence is both common and an accepted part of network viewing unlike the gunshy United States, in which hockey's pugilistic sidebars are often sited as a reason for the lack of mainstream. Overly complicated stick-and-ball sports rules cause both a cultural and language divide when exported; hockey, particularly with the nuking of two-line passes and offsides rules, is now much easier to follow.
Still the NHL continues to be shortsighted and deftly avoids both controversy and viewers. Give Al Jazeera a credential.
Better yet, give it full broadcasting rights.
Allah knows the commissioner will crave the expansion dollars.
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