§ NHL is shooting itself
So ESPN reports that it is not picking up its $60M option to retain some exclusive rights for next years hockey season. It has declined further comment but promises a clarification in the coming week.
I don’t like it. No matter how you look at it, from the player’s side or the owner’s side, there’s not enough money going into the NHL, and in taking this long to settle the expiration of the Collective Bargaining Agreement they’ve up and lost a ton of money.
I can only imagine what advertising premiums they’re gonna lose as well. Not to mention fan support. The only reason I had any kind of extended Cable TV coverage was to get hockey, but now I think I may have learned to live without it. I used to love to watch hockey. The love / hate relationship with the Avalanche was a hard thing but overall was a lot of fun and on the whole Hockey is a fast and very dynamic game to watch. I don’t miss it anymore. I think that might be a bad thing.
Ah, maybe I’m just grumpy ‘cause I missed an entire season of Hockey, but I honestly care more about seeing good games this upcoming season than I do about seeing big names on the roster.
We learned last few years that high priced teams don’t mean squat. The cups have gone to hungry teams not to the top talent. This tells me that the players don’t care as much about being on the best team as they do about who pays them more. And with teams out there like the Rangers who will just throw money around willie nillie we’ll continue to have a salary problem.
The players and the owners need to police themselves and keep it reasonable. I hope they do figure something out – I’d like to be able to afford to go to a few games when I regain interest in hockey.
Tagged as: nhl television
