The NHL's Broad Appeal

Gary Bettman has been on a mission to make hockey work throughout the United States. Allowing a team to relocate to Phoenix, and adding expansion franchises in Nashville, Florida and Atlanta (who originally had the Flames) was part of his mission to bring hockey to the masses. Unfortunately, at times it's been an exercise in futility.


Now, that's not to say that these areas have passionate fans. Far from it. But when three of these clubs are in the bottom five in terms of attendance, and the Coyotes are on the brink of economic collapse, it's time to reassess the plan.

For starters, there's no viable national network putting forth the product. I know Versus is 'national', but when most cable companies require you to have their top tier of programming to get it, you have cut off a huge portion of the population. In fact, it's been touted that Versus ratings are up 10% for the playoffs, but in terms of television ratings, they're only getting a 0.4 share (which works out to about 465000 viewers). NBC (whenever they decide a game is worthy enough to play...there were no playoff games this weekend) manages to averag about a 1.5 share (1.6 million viewers).

To be fair, there have been some successes. The Dallas Stars have been a successful transplant, as well as the Carolina Hurricanes. The three California teams have all been big, as well. But when the league is lending millions of dollars to prop up a failing franchise, and there's now word that a group from Vancouver wants to purchase and relocate the Atlanta Thrashers, the experiment is over.