re: Wait, the NHL is about to have ANOTHER Lockout?

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I'm not going to look up individual team tv ratings, if it's even available, to apply here.

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Never said ratings. I said money.

The money from TV is far more relevant than arena attendance. TV revenue is an indication of fan interest.

The NHL is small because their TV contracts are small. Viewership is small. Interest is small.

I like hockey better than basketball, but it is a small sport by comparison.

And sorry for the inappropriate response. Will edit.

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Owners need to give a little here. They're being pretty ridiculous.

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Depends on if you are a fan of a large market team or a small market team.

It's fine for the NY Rangers / Bruins / Leafs to give more of a share to the players, but there are also teams that are performing poorly financially that have everything to do with expenses even though revenues are okay.

If the owners don't get a larger share of the pie, that's fine, but it will mean the end of hockey in Phoenix, Smashville, New Jersey, Tampa, Columbus, and Florida.

The players need to make a decision - continue with the momentum they have created and continue to build a strong product where teams are roughly equal in terms of talent, or lose 6 teams in the next 10 years putting 180 players out of work in the process.

Let's face it - it's not like the Columbus Blue Jackets are making much on TV revenues or merchandise royalties.

Doing the math - a 5% royalty on every $35 piece of officially licensed product - assuming they sold 600k of them (can columbus really have more than 600k people willing to buy a hat / tshirt?) would net them $1.1M. That's not even enough for a decent goalie these days.

Also - assuming they get 250k viewers it would net out to about $75k in ad revenue per game for a total of $6m in TV revenues per year.

We aren't talking huge #'s in ancillary revenue for the owners these days. The NHL isn't the Boston Red Sox for these smaller market teams.

At any rate - as I see it, the players have to either decide they want to shrink the pool of union members and accept that teams will fail and the league will contract or give into some sort of concession.

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And people actually going to games isn't?

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Of course it is. The point is that compared to arena money, the TV money is where it is at.

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actual popularity is better gauged by the raw numbers of attendance and how many people watched

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And you think more people watch the NHL than the NBA? No way.

p.s. Born in Canada and was playing hockey before it was ever in the south.

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but actual popularity is better gauged by the raw numbers of attendance and how many people watched.

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i think costs would be a huge variable here. it's a lost easier to fill a stadium when ticket prices are half of an NBA ticket

i don't know if this applies to the NHL, but it's a reason why i hate judging attendance numbers

Jesus can we go a year without having some kind of Lockout? First the NFL, then NBA, then NFL refs, and now this? I'm not a huge hockey fan or anything but it's just getting ridiculous.

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And you think more people watch the NHL than the NBA? No way.

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Idk man, if you would have said the same thing about attendance, I would have assumed the NBA had better attendance numbers than the NHL.

I already know that the Bruins and Redwings had higher tv ratings than the Pistons and Celtics, including the playoffs.

Up East, I really don't know, I bet it's a lot closer than you are implying in local markets.

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Tampa Bay

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I don't think TB is hurting near as bad as when that 2010 article was written, they have sold out almost every game and mainly because of Stamkos.

Stamkos alone is keeping TB above water and rising each year.

Damn, I'm not sure that the NHL could recover from another lockout.

Mother frick