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That's the point. MLS is and has been growing. The NHL has not and has been doing nothing but cannibalizing itself the past decade. Games used to be on ESPN2 and FOX every week. Now they're on a channel many people don't even get. I'm 31 years old. In my lifetime there is a credible chance that soccer gains immense popularity. MLS also does not change rules in a lame attempt to lure in more fans. What good did all the rule changes do for the NHL? Where are all these new fans these changes were set to lure in?
Ok...by a decade or two I'm pretty much saying "worse case scenario" for the NHL. Like if the league contracts and there's an epic disaster with TV deals. And pretty much best case for the MLS.
You want to talk about TV deals? The MLS TV deal is worth $27 million per year. $27 million!!
NBC's deal with the NHL is $200 million. CBC's is $100 million. And none of this includes the individual deals that teams have with regional sports networks. I can watch nearly every game my team plays on a channel that most people get here.
The MLS's total payroll is $91 million. TOTAL. The two bottom teams in hockey combine for over $100 million. The NHL total is over $1.8 billion.
Before the lockout, the NHL brought in $3.3 billion in revenue. A record. In fact, it was the 7th straight season of record revenue. So it's not like the NHL is treading water. MLS recorded $280 million in revenue. About 8.5% of what the NHL has now.
And back to total attendance. 21.5 million vs. 6.1 million. And it should be noted that NHL fans are paying more than twice as much for tickets.
The lockout is an obvious setback. But it shouldn't be quite as bad as last time simply because they will get in about 60% of a season plus playoffs. But even with "cannibalizing" as you call it, the NHL continued to bring in more money, and after things get settled, I don't see why that would change going forward.
As for rule changes. I'm not always for rule changes, but two of them were definitely needed: tag up onsides (aka delayed offsides) and removal of the two line pass rule (essentially removal of the center line). These two things help improve the flow of the game. But you should know that. You're posting on the hockey forum.
As for "all of the new fans" the NHL is supposed to attract. Where? Most NHL arenas are filled up for each game. 16 teams max out their capacity as an average for the season, and 5 more bring in more than 96%. The rest of the teams, bringing in 72-87%, largely suck (or in the case of Phoenix and Dallas, had ownership issues). All the Canadian teams maxed out.
So with most of the league filling up their arenas with regularity, what new fans are needed? You're always going to have attendance issues with the perennial sucky teams (unless said team is in Toronto). I'm sure the TV deal could be better. But ESPN wanted to low ball the NHL after the last lockout, which is why the NHL doesn't appear on their networks now.
So, assuming things go more or less like they did after the last lockout, the MLS needs to get about 10x larger in every conceivable way (except number of teams) to be getting close to competing with the NHL.
I love the fact when people bring up attendance numbers. Do you may attention to what the capacity of the arena is?? The MLS teams have a minimum capacity of at least 25 or 30 thousand, whereabouts the NHL/NBA have a maximum capacity of about 22,000. Of course MLS will draw more fans......................they have more then half the number of seats to fill.
I come in here expecting people to be posting about hockey returning and all the hurrays. Instead I see posts about MLS overtaking the NHL in popularity/sales, whatever. First of all no, the NHL is in no danger of being overtaken by the MLS in the near future, if ever. The thought is laughable, almost everyone I know that follows soccer follow International Soccer much more intensely than the MLS, a league that is laughable compared to many other leagues.
I wish the MLS luck and hope it succeeds in becoming a respectable league like Serie A or Premiere League but that prospect is way in the future, if it ever happens.
Vancouver Canucks 2012 Recap/2013 Pump Up - YouTube
Finally time for some Hockey cause Vancouver sucks without having the NHL to fill the bars and pubs it hurts a lot of smaller places and effected staff and retail and service industry jobs since no hockey means no Bars need extra staff or more Cooks to employ and thus less people to pay taxes to fund fixing some crappy Roads or go out shopping for big ticket items which also hurts the economy.
Also MLS is not very exciting esp. since it gets maybe 2 minutes of coverage on major network TV and only if something funny happens or an awesome Goal is scored other wise it is NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL coverage on most major sports network broadcasts and news sites.
Yeah, that's a bit of head-scratcher - especially the timing. Rumour has it that Burke and ownership had a falling out over Roberto Luongo. But there's definitely a back story here.
My Islanders are already having another issue with our Russian again. First he claims the trade was illegal. Now he doesn't want to return to the NHL. Do athletes ever realize that it is more than just a job? It is an honor to play in the NHL and they should respect that, as well as their contracts.
Curious to see what the price will be for the rest of the season ... Something completely out of line with the value, no doubt.
I suppose it depends what is considered value. I will pay whatever they ask. I watch 2-3 games per day on Center Ice. Average that out over the course of the season (even an abbreviated season) and to me it is a great value.
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