Marketing Professional Hockey

I am going to preface this by saying, I am probably so wrong, I am right. Hockey has not been well marketed. The message behind why you watch it is confusing. Am I watching hockey because it’s a beautiful ballet? Am I watching hockey because I’ve heard about the star players and now feel compelled to watch? Or am I watching because I just want to figure out the rules?

Those seem to be the predominant themes that have driven the marketing of pro hockey. Talk about boring and one-dimensional. I get the impression now that if Sidney Crosby doesn’t play for or against my team, I shouldn’t even bother watching.

The game needs to be marketed as, ‘great guys, playing a tough game’. It is that simple. Hockey players are universally acknowledged as being highly accessible, very friendly and appear to actually enjoy playing the game at the professional level.

They are also, in the vast majority of cases, not pituitary gland freak shows. Nor are they required to sleep on their stomachs because of the needle they place in their ass every night in order to wake up ‘refreshed’. They aren’t ego freaks. I hear the argument occasionally; hockey players are so boring, they never say anything controversial. Good! What’s the alternative? Chad Johnson antics? Terrell Owens? Curt Schilling? Only in the hockey world is what could be viewed as a huge positive or at worst a neutral issue, be turned into a negative.

Pitch the game as tough (people actually fight), physical (people collide going 30 miles an hour chasing a puck traveling a 100 miles an hour), highly skilled (you try toe dragging a 6’4 defensemen, let alone doing that while on skates) and extraordinarily demanding game (I mean you can only play for 30-45 seconds at a time) and its played by people, who look, well, normal. If peopel understood this they would feel compelled to watch. Explaining the rules is a waste of time. I don't get NFL rules, but I still watch on T.V. Selling only 5 players to the public doesn’t work and in my opinion limits the appeal of the game. This approach hasn’t worked since Jordan left professional sport (the exception being perhaps Tiger – and we've seen that Lebron hasn’t worked out as the NBA had hoped).

Whatever the NHL has been doing hasn’t worked. So how wrong can I be?