Comments on an NHL related article on ESPN's web site - Selling the NHL in a Post Lockout Environment (Part 1)

Ok let's face it, Selling the NHL in a US market where the WNBA gets better ratings than the NHL would probably keep the average advertiser and publicists from working with the owners. It's probably an impossible task right? It's been done before. The task of taking a product that the American public wouldn't look twice at, investing money into the correct marketing of the product and then watching the cashflow come back to the investors ten fold. It can be done.

I'll use two examples of selling a product and watching the $$$ roll in:

Nascar
Country Music, specifically Country Music Television.

I don't know if any of you have ever read Tony Robbins books or not. I'm sure you've seen him on QVC or on infomercials. Anyways, one of his ingredients for success is to find people or parties that in some way have become successful in certain areas. If you're interested in Business or Real Estate you may want to research about Donald Trump and how he became successful. If you're interested in Becoming a pro basketball player, perhaps you'd research the careers of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird or Magic Johnson. You get the point.

This same theory can be applied to the NHL to better the game.

Let's start with Nascar.

At one point in time Nascar wasn't even a blip on the Radar of Sports Networks. Repeats of the 'World's Strongest Man' shows, in the past, would have gotten better ratings than live Nascar events.

Enter Fox Sports (among others) investing time and money into the education of the sport. I don't remember a time on the Fox Regional Sports Networks where they didn't have some sort of show that taught people about the sport. It took some time but as you can see, Nascar is gaining popularity in the TV ratings across the US.

IMO, This is the first example of what needs to be modeled and applied to the NHL.

Country Music

Now you're probably asking yourself what does Country Music have to do with the NHL? First off, look at the rise in record sales versus pop music. In this day and age, Country Music out sells pop music by a great margin. It didn't used to be that way.
During my last hiatus from being employed (being a career contractor tends to have periods of unemployment), I took a long and hard look at how Country music is being sold to the masses.

I watched quite a large sample of shows and Country Music Television did an excellent job of bringing in people who weren't normally country fans. I'm only going to give one example of the types of methods that were applied to bring in new fans to Country Music because I like my weekends and I don't want to be typing all weekend.

Next time the show 'Crossroads' is on, sit down and watch it. The show is the bringing together of an artist from the Pop/Rock vein and matching them up with a Country Star. It's a pretty good show. The best ones were the ones with Ray Charles and John Mellencamp. Anyhoo, this show not only exposes pop/rock fans to country music but it also gives Country Fans a good listen to pop/rock music.

The methods that the Country Music Industry is using to bring in more fans is definitely worth studying for potential application to the NHL.

Let's face it you can't argue with the results of Nascar and Country Music Sales.

In my next post I'll offer some suggestions to better market the game. Including rule changes, commercials