It wouldn’t be fair to say that the National Hockey League has failed in every way possible at marketing its product. It is true, however, that the National Football League is the gold standard. After all, the NFL has a $3.3-billion per year television deal and the NHL has a $70-million deal. If the NHL has a marketing department-which is doubtful judging by the above numbers and the ads the league produced-they should all go home and read a little fairy tale called The Emperor’s New Clothes.
In the fable, the emperor parades through town wearing special cloth that only the most intelligent people can see. Of course, the emperor is actually buck-naked and no one can see the material. Nonetheless, everyone marvels at the emperor’s magnificent robes for fear of being seen as dumb. This can be applied to the NFL. The all-mighty NFL has convinced people that it is vastly superior to the NHL, when in fact it is not inherently greater than other leagues at all. People get caught up in something the NHL and the other leagues lack: hype.
The NFL has won this battle through understanding that all sports are essentially similar. They all have their hardcore audience. The trick is tapping into the causal fan. And the casual sports fan doesn’t watch football because it is fundamentally better than hockey; rather, they watch because they want to be entertained and find something beyond the game that interests them. Through accepting that sports are now sports and entertainment, the NFL has managed to change a typical game into a show. Monday Night Football is in the same category as C.S.I, American Idol or whatever else is competing for television audiences. If you turn on NBC’s Football Night in America on Sunday night, the first thing played is the theme song, followed by credits listing who is producing the game-it’s never actual football. For the NFL, the Dallas Cowboys aren’t playing the Washington Redskins; rather we are watching Bill Parcells, Terrell Owens, Terrell Owens’ first home game, the historic Redskins-Cowboys rivalry, and so on.
In other words, there is the game and then there is the mystique around the game. The characters such as Owens, the rivalries and the revved-up fans all draw in television audiences. The NHL just doesn’t have characters or hype unless it is something blatantly obvious-such as Bertuzzi’s first game in Colorado. If Calgary is playing Atlanta we hear more about the teams and the standings instead of the Dion Phaneuf-Ilya Kovalchuk match-up. There has to be anger, storylines and hype for the NHL to compete.
The NFL, obviously, has certain advantages such as teams only playing once a week, the larger amount of players and its ease to televise. The NHL, however, can seize upon its own attributes. For one, the players can literally fight each other and do anything stopping short of bringing a knife or gun onto the ice-the NHL is the ultimate gladiator sport and, therefore, perfect for rivalries. Second, some teams like the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, have a mystique surrounding their fans and stadium, and the teams could easily be marketed like that in the NHL-the Philadelphia Flyers are mean, Edmonton’s fans are noisy, Florida has a bunch of grumpy old men.
This leads to a more important, all-encompassing point that die-hard fans are probably turning over in their minds right now. Why should anyone care that the NFL has billions of dollars more than the NHL and is eminently more successful in every possible way? After all, we Canadians still like hockey-ratings have never been higher. The answer is that we shouldn’t care if the NFL is bigger than the NHL. But as fans, we can’t help ourselves; watching a flamboyant Chad Johnson is just more fun than watching a muzzled Darcy Tucker.
