ESPN could cut ties with NHL

[RangerBoy]

That's stupid.

The fall in TV revenues is due to overexpansion, lack of marketing, and failure to correct the obstruction problem. None of those things are the players' responsibility. If anything, the players have been talking about correcting those things for years.

Why should players take a salary hit when it's the league's leadership that has made the poor decisions and caused revenue (TV and otherwise) to slide?

Excuse me but the players haven't benefitted from expansion?How many NHL jobs were created with expansion?How many careers have been extended because of expansion?

Bettman took over a $600 million business and turned into a $2.1 BILLION business.He must have done something right.The average salary increased from $733,000 to $1.8 million in 10 seasons

The players talk about wanting to be partners but they don't want to put up any money or share in the losses.That's a partnership.The players want a partnership only when it benefits their pocket

Lets contract some of the franchises which leads to loss of NHL jobs.How do you think those players would feel?

Whenever the NHL plays again,there will be a cap on the NHL's terms

 

[st5801]

a lot of teams already use Fox Sports to broadcast their local games...maybe you're talking about something else though, i dunno. it'd be kind of wonky for fox sports net to handle national broadcasts and still be able to provide the normal local coverage to teams unless they made another channel for national games.

That's funny, because just the other day I got a survey from them gaging my interest in a new national Fox sports channel. It even had me rank names for the channel and names for a nightly highlight show and watch a short movie of a new form of auto racing that they're considering launching.

 

[Mess]

They're affiliated, but they're not the same. My point was there is no ESPN in Canada, the original post about that implied there was.


They knew this going into this lockout. The NBC deal doesn't give the NHL any revenue until NBC makes a profit on it.

"They knew this going into this lockout"

If either side cared about the fans and the fallout they should have gotten a deal done last summer.. IMO

Acted in the Best interest of the game and realized the fallout could be dramatic ..

Good Faith bargaining is what it would have taken and neither side has come anywhere close to that ..

I really wasn't directing my comment at you .. However I do believe even TSN could have a fallout .. They have no games to show and and depending on fans after this ends viewers could be way down, ratings down

 

[ScottyBowman]

The players have been neutered by the owners but guess what? The owners are about to get neutered by ESPN. It is going to be a huge blow not to have hockey on ESPN. The NHL can not afford to lose another major tv contract with the biggest sports station in the world. The owners might be rich and arrogant but they aren't stupid. For some strange reason, ESPN will somehow save the season. The network all the bozos on this board love to hate.