Mark Cuban: The Lesson Of Happy Gilmore and Pro Sports Marketing in the 21st Century

[Jazz]

Mark Cuban, in his latest blog, discusses that controversy, personalities, trash-talk etc is what drives sports ratings these days from the casual fans. Hard-core fans will always watch, but that more effort must be done to sway the casual fan these days.

http://www.blogmaverick.com/2006/12/25/the-lesson-of-happy-gilmore-and-pro-sports-marketing/

Has a paragraph about the NHL, how one part of it's culture (ie, discouraging individualism) is limiting it's potential interest from casual fans, thus bigger rating and potential revenue:

One of the biggest challenges the NHL has is that there isn't one player that we all know is going to be quotable and the media is going to run with and pay too much attention to. Now if Sidney Crosby, or any of the young superstars of the NHL were to be quoted bragging about themself as "The Greatest of All Time", or about how they "hate so and so", or were to get a hat trick and pull out a cap and put it in front of the opposing goal keeper. Or maybe, pull out a magic marker and write the score of the game on the boards. Yeah, there would be some gloves dropped, but if it happened a 2nd time, it would be all over the national news and sports fans across the country just might be curious enough to turn on the TV to see what would happen next. Its the Happy Gilmore affect.

Discuss.

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[desmond]

Cuban is a smart guy but I don't think he understands hockey.

 

[Dumpster Flyers]

To some extent, I agree with him. It is almost like every player has the same personality, reading from a script during the interviews and doing the same goal celebrations over and over again. There are a few players that sometimes stray from the norm, but none of them were like Roenick when he could play hockey. He could sell the game well.

 

[Pepper]

Cuban understands the basics of pro sports and it's no different in hockey.

He's basicly saying the same thing that many writers have been calling for recently. More emotion and more passion.

 

[Snap Wilson]

The NHL has had these guys. Brett Hull was as quotable as anyone. Sean Avery has done everything but tie a woman to some railroad tracks and twirl his moustache, and I suspect the NHL let him get away with it so long was because they were hoping his antics might get some attention. Hockey used to be FILLED with characters, good guys, bad guys, quotable guys. It didn't help. In general, the national American media doesn't care about hockey, unless something REALLY BAD happens, like the Bertuzzi incident or the lockout. Because the national American media doesn't care about it, casual sports fans (who are mostly sheep) don't think they should care either.

 

[chiavsfan]

Remember the general rule: If it happens in another sport, it's news. If it happens in the NHL, it's just another "black eye" for the league

 

[mooseOAK*]

I see Cuban's point about personalities but that type of stuff would probably turn off the dedicated hockey fan moreso than it will attract the curious non-hockey fan.

 

[Snap Wilson]

I see Cuban's point about personalities but that type of stuff would probably turn off the dedicated hockey fan moreso than it will attract the curious non-hockey fan.

The dedicated hockey fan will probably remember a time when the league was mostly personality-driven.

 

[mooseOAK*]

The dedicated hockey fan will probably remember a time when the league was mostly personality-driven.

It was never that type of personality.

 

[GSC2k2*]

The dedicated hockey fan will probably remember a time when the league was mostly personality-driven.

Never happened.

Hockey was never "FILLED with characters, good guys, bad guys, quotable guys."

Even Jeremy Roenick, who is referred to above as being able to "sell the game well" is relatively boring and always was. He just seems like more than he is because of the boring drones around him. Compare it to a guy wearing a blue dress shirt with the top button unbuttoned in a sea of guys wearing white button-down shirts and ties. A blue dress shirt is in fact fairly dull, but in a sea of white shirts it may come off as a wacky, interesting choice.

 

[mazmin]

Wouldn't that be lovely if reporters hounded NHL players like they do to the NFLers.

Wouldn't it be great to see a "who's better" bragging contest between Crosby and Ovechkin (scripted by their drooling fans on HF boards).

Nothing Cuban mentioned has to do with hockey. Hockey should sell itself, it's a great game. If it isn't selling itself in the USA, Canada will gladly take more teams.

Is the only hope for the NHL is the USA to turn it into a media circus with "characters" and "drama" and "feuds" and "trash talk"? That's all a bunch of bull to me and if it ever came to that I'd undoubtedly boycott NHL hockey and ask REAL hockey fans to step up and do the same.

 

[thrillonomicist]

He has a point; I know that the trash talking that went on between the Leafs and Bruins between games of a home and home (because of Paul Mara and Darcy Tucker's fight) added a bit of drama to the game and made the rivalry seem more real. It adds a more human element to it that fantastic dekes, smaller goalie pads, and less obstruction calls can add.

The NHL, in recent years, hasn't had a major character that has bragged but in a harmless way. The last time the "bad guy" character Sean Avery made the news, it was for dropping racist slurs; that'd be a "black eye" for any league. The NHL may need a character like Chad Johnson from the NFL just to mix things up a bit.

 

[SerialSeb]

The NHL has had these guys. Brett Hull was as quotable as anyone. Sean Avery has done everything but tie a woman to some railroad tracks and twirl his moustache, and I suspect the NHL let him get away with it so long was because they were hoping his antics might get some attention. Hockey used to be FILLED with characters, good guys, bad guys, quotable guys. It didn't help. In general, the national American media doesn't care about hockey, unless something REALLY BAD happens, like the Bertuzzi incident or the lockout. Because the national American media doesn't care about it, casual sports fans (who are mostly sheep) don't think they should care either.

Bingo!

Gretzky sold the game to California during his stay there and we are seeing the benefit of it today, but how many Gretzky's are they going to need to get all the other regions to get going and keep on going?

And loved that moustache twirl reference... it was the funny

 

[Greschner4]

Who died and made Mark Cuban the sagest sports marketer in the world ... as he plainly thinks he is?

 

[XX]

If having an "individual that the media can focus on" means having a version of TO in hockey, ill pass.

 

[Greeneye]

If having an "individual that the media can focus on" means having a version of TO in hockey, ill pass.

Seconded. One TO is more than enough.

 

[Greschner4]

One day the NHL's emphasis on the team and the sport instead of the "personalities" may be in style again and the NHL would be stupid to change now in the midst of what may just be a short-term thing.

 

[Guest]

It's an interesting topic for discussion. As usual on these boards, I think people are making polar comparisons of his comments and not finding the true value in them. The NHL could learn a lot by adding some drama to the game, but it doesn't necessarily have to be negative drama. There is drama in every game, every situation that happens in the league. Most of the time the reporting of this drama is presented in the nightly news format, which is informative, but it doesn't develop the story. There is always a story to be told, it's just up to someone to find that story and develop it. There are not many storytellers in the NHL.

 

[Snap Wilson]

It was never that type of personality.

Say what?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yOQwJTKhXTs

 

[Snap Wilson]

Never happened.

Hockey was never "FILLED with characters, good guys, bad guys, quotable guys."

Even Jeremy Roenick, who is referred to above as being able to "sell the game well" is relatively boring and always was.

If your experience only goes back as far as J.R., then yes, to you it "never happened."

 

[19nazzy]

Wouldn't it be great to see a "who's better" bragging contest between Crosby and Ovechkin (scripted by their drooling fans on HF boards).

Yes.

 

[Jaded-Fan]

The NHL can not make personalities. Just focus on keeping scoring up and the personality thing should take care of itself. Kind of hard to hop around taunting everyone around you when you just score your 20th point in a 1-0 game and it is the 30'th game of the season. Get 15 or 20 100 pt. plus scorers and you just may see some cockiness come to hockey, for better or worse.

 

[mooseOAK*]

Say what?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yOQwJTKhXTs

What does that have to do with anything?

 

[Sotnos]

If having an "individual that the media can focus on" means having a version of TO in hockey, ill pass.

Agreed. I understand Cuban's basic concept there, but the very thought of having guys who behave like some of the more obnoxious NFLers makes my stomach turn a little.

There's a difference between the sort of ego-idiocy we see with some of those guys and having players who are quotable and "characters". My dad tells me stories of some of the players from the 50s-70s or so, there were a lot of interesting personalities in the League back then. Not sure what's different now, except a lot of the top players have probably been groomed by agents from a young age to be polite but reserved in front of the cameras, and most of the time no one outside of a team's local media talks to anyone but the top players.

Can't imagine what this place would be like if there was a T.O.-ish hockey player. People here have a cow if Kovalchuk (or any other European) pumps his first too much for their taste.

 

[Crossfire Hurricane]

I agree, for the most part. In Colorado, when the Broncos play the Raiders, it's all anyone talks about. The Nuggets have Carmello Anthony and Allen Iverson, two players already known for their individual transgressions. The Avalanche-Red Wings rivalry is all but dead, our marquee players are retired, gone, or were never too high profile to begin with. The league misses the drama