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for larger version       NHL Needs More Than Agreement To Court Jilted Fans After posturing, bickering and finally simply not speaking, the NHL has ended it’s lockout after 300-some days and the 2,460 total games missed, not counting the postseason. And not a moment too soon, right? Well, sort of. The 2005-2006 season will be played, according to the labor agreement reached in principle last week. The economic system, all agree – other than Jeremy Roenick – will be good for the league. The old game is back. Or is it? Already falling behind in popularity to sports like NASCAR, the NHL needed the lockout as much as Michael Jackson needed more plastic surgery. Though the league announced last Thursday that a six-year collective bargaining agreement had been reached, and despite all the smiles and handshakes, the good-will might be short-lived. One mark of a sound sports league is a cable TV contract. Yet ESPN – which now includes sports most people have never heard of – decided to opt out of its NHL deal after carrying it for more than 15 years. NBC will show games, but they are paying no rights fees to the NHL for that privilege. Nada, zip, zilch. Many advertisers, burned after losing a full season of being able to reach fans, are likely to be hesitant in returning. The NHL has dug itself a huge hole and it’s going to take a lot more than just the promise of six years of labor peace to fill it in. Even Canadian sponsors are wary about coming back to their National Pastime. Speaking of returning, what about the fans? Since the apex of the NHL during the 1993-1994 Stanley Cup playoffs – which, coincidentally, was followed by a lockout-shortened season – the NHL has begun a steady decline in popularity. The league is much too dependent on its fans for revenues. Without a large TV contract – by comparison, every NFL teams bring in tens of millions of dollars in rights fees each year – how will the league make money? Several teams are already promising reduced-priced tickets which will surely bring some of those fans on the fence back to the arenas, but at what cost? The money the owners will be saving because of the new labor contract will go right out the window with lower-priced seats. But without a promise of cheaper tickets, too many fans will remain turned off to the sport that became the first in this country’s history to cancel an entire season. And what of the players? What do they get for being the first unionized sporting group to have an entire year cancelled? The salary cap now imposed on NHL teams may very well be the saving grace for the sport competitively, but without one marketable star (where have you gone Wayne Gretzky?) to lean on, how could the NHLPA and rep Bob Goodenow possibly have expected a victory over the owners? During the exciting 1994 Stanley Cup Finals, Mark Messier and the New York Rangers captured their first title in 54 years in the country’s biggest media market. Even Sports Illustrated thought enough of the sport put the feat on their cover. That was 11 years and one month ago. It only seems that long since the NHL last dropped the puck.
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