NHL sells European broadcasting rights to Medge Consulting/AMI for 5 years

[HabsByTheBay]

Do we know how long the Premier Sports deal is?

Premier Sports makes OLN look like a widely followed, interesting channel. Hopefully the NHL is back on ESPN-A next year.

 

[Smidster]

Do we know how long the Premier Sports deal is?

Premier Sports makes OLN look like a widely followed, interesting channel. Hopefully the NHL is back on ESPN-A next year.

The Premier deal is a 1 year deal..Personally I wouldn't be shocked if they go bust first.

 

[Hopeless Unbeliever]

Going to stick with the Vault for now, great service for the money. Will I be able to subscribe to GCL down the stretch/in the playoffs i.e. for 2-3 months?

 

[Coatsy79]

Premier sports isn't available on cable tv!!

Grrrrrrrrrrrr

This really is a shower of s£@t

God bless the leafs game in six or I'd never see anything!

 

[AlanHUK]

yeah it's gonna suck this year for the UK, until premier goes the way of setanta and ESPN buy up the rights on the cheap

 

[Schalkenullvier*]

I have a little trouble with espn america, and I hope my german fellows can help me out. I have always used the web for streams in the past, but for the playoffs in 2012 (maybe earlier), I want to have espn america (I believe I can book it for single months). When I now go to the espn website, it lists some digital tv providers where I can book it. Now I don't now what my digital provider is (I still watch analog for the most part tbh), but will I have to book a full sky/Kabel Deutschland etc. package just to get espn america?

 

[Chapin Landvogt]

I have a little trouble with espn america, and I hope my german fellows can help me out. I have always used the web for streams in the past, but for the playoffs in 2012 (maybe earlier), I want to have espn america (I believe I can book it for single months). When I now go to the espn website, it lists some digital tv providers where I can book it. Now I don't now what my digital provider is (I still watch analog for the most part tbh), but will I have to book a full sky/Kabel Deutschland etc. package just to get espn america?

Unfortunately, you'd have to go with one or the other, with Kabel Deutschland being far and away the cheaper option. That will still run you roughly 11 EUR per month.

 

[Freak187]

I don't know about my fellow Europeans, but in the Netherlands NHL is back on ESPN America!

 

[LFDM]

GCL is far superior than the ESPN Player for sure, there's only one (huge) disadvantage: the stupid (nationallly televised) blackout games. No legal chance for us europeans to watch those... to make it worse: why has the blackout to stay in effect for 48 hours?
Any idea what we could do about that?

 

[jnorthall]

Latest snub by Commissioner Bettman for European fans: http://pucksatp.hockeytutorial.com/2011/bettman-phone-call-part/

 

[Realize]

Does anyone else have the problems that NHL Vault is buffering all the time when watching the extender highlights (in 10-11 mins)?

Whily GCLive is running absolutely great and withoug buffer-problems, the damn vault is buffering every 5 seconds ..

 

[jnorthall]

Respectfully ask all hockey fans to help with this appeal! http://www.facebook.com/nonhlontvineurope/posts/131507143627951 Thanks in advance.

 

[Hopeless Unbeliever]

Anyone any reports on how the Premier Sports coverage has been? Really miss HNIC but I'm on Virgin Media so it would be a significant hassle to switch and I don't want to do that to be lumped with South American football etc on Saturday nights.

Thanks.

 

[Parapop22]

Anyone any reports on how the Premier Sports coverage has been? Really miss HNIC but I'm on Virgin Media so it would be a significant hassle to switch and I don't want to do that to be lumped with South American football etc on Saturday nights.

Thanks.

I live in NI and instead of Premier Sports we have Setanta, but really it's the same guys.

The coverage of the actual games is good but some teams are covered a lot more than others. The Florida Panthers are only getting their first showing of the season in the next couple of days. Likewise there has been little coverage of St Louis, Nashville, Phoenix, Islanders, Winnipeg.

If you want to see Toronto or San Jose however for example you're falling over yourselves.

Outside of the actual games there is no coverage at all.

 

[Brodie]

It's kind of pathetic that in the course of 5 years the NHL has gone from having Stanley Cup games broadcast on Channel 5 to having all of their games on a fourth rate cable network.

Gee, it's almost as if it would make more sense to play the European Premiere in London instead of like Helsinki...

 

[HabsByTheBay]

C5 isn't the NHL's fault, the channel went bankrupt and got bought out by Richard Desmond. C5 used to show all North American sports on their channel on late-nite and they're all gone. The NFL currently pays C4 a lot of money to show Sunday Night Football, but that's the situation - it's pay for play.

The Medge/AMI situation is very obviously their fault, but the NHL will probably be back on ESPN America next year. It's not a situation where nobody wants to broadcast the NHL.

As for NHL Premiere in London, I'd love to see it, but there'd be very little growing the game there. It'd be a nice sop to Canadian/US/Euro expats in London...there's just not that many British people who care about hockey and hardly any in London. The only real hockey rink in the city is closing today and nobody gives a damn.

 

[Brodie]

I think there's greater growth potential in Britain than you're giving credit for. It wouldn't be over night but I'd rather see them make the investment there than in Bratislava, where people already care. I'd have never guessed in 2005 that British interest in the NFL would rise to it's current level, but here we are... and that's with the Wembley games mostly being sops for American and Canadian expats.

 

[Bluebirds Boyo]

I do think he's underselling London. The last two trips to the Dome sold-out, compared to some quite poor crowds in some of the other European cities. Comparing it to domestic hockey doesn't quite seem fair; there is no professional team because there isn't adequate facilities to support it, but for one or two-off games the O2, London and Britain seems such an obvious choice for the NHL that I'm surprised we're continually overlooked while the NFL and NBA look to cash-in.

 

[El Gringo]

So, does the GCL fee include the playoffs? The site mentions 8 months for the fee, but I suspect this doesn't include the playoffs - is this correct?

 

[incident]

C5 isn't the NHL's fault, the channel went bankrupt and got bought out by Richard Desmond. C5 used to show all North American sports on their channel on late-nite and they're all gone. The NFL currently pays C4 a lot of money to show Sunday Night Football, but that's the situation - it's pay for play.

That's not entirely accurate. The late night sports (certainly the NHL) had pretty much disappeared from C5 long before Dirty Desmond bought the channel.

The biggest issue was a change in UK broadcasting regulations a few years back. The main broadcast channels used to be required to produce a certain percentage of first run, UK-produced programming. By using a UK studio team to "present" the late night sports coverage, C5 could claim it as UK-produced so it counted towards the quota.

Basically they met the quota with very cheap programming during the dead hours so they could run whatever they wanted during prime time.

 

[Zat]

So, does the GCL fee include the playoffs? The site mentions 8 months for the fee, but I suspect this doesn't include the playoffs - is this correct?

It does include them.

 

[HabsByTheBay]

That's not entirely accurate. The late night sports (certainly the NHL) had pretty much disappeared from C5 long before Dirty Desmond bought the channel.

The biggest issue was a change in UK broadcasting regulations a few years back. The main broadcast channels used to be required to produce a certain percentage of first run, UK-produced programming. By using a UK studio team to "present" the late night sports coverage, C5 could claim it as UK-produced so it counted towards the quota.

Basically they met the quota with very cheap programming during the dead hours so they could run whatever they wanted during prime time.

The adverts rule that they circumvented with the US sport was a big factor, but the primary reason they got rid of the US sport was that C5 was going broke. They cut their spend by something like a quarter within 18 months.

My source for this is one of the Sunset + Vine producers, who did all the US sport.

 

[Brodie]

I see... and yet the NFL still manages to be shown on two OTA networks (though obviously the SNF rights are pay to air and the Super Bowl is split between Sky and BBC1)

Has there ever been any chatter about the NHL going to Sky? That seems too good to be true.

 

[HabsByTheBay]

I see... and yet the NFL still manages to be shown on two OTA networks (though obviously the SNF rights are pay to air and the Super Bowl is split between Sky and BBC1)

Has there ever been any chatter about the NHL going to Sky? That seems too good to be true.

The NFL pays Channel 4 for SNF and the Super Bowl gets 700,000 viewers on BBC1 despite most hardcore NFL fans watching on Sky, who also show the game.

If the NHL could get 700,000 people to tune into anything in the UK I'd support having a game here for reasons beyond my own self-interest. The NFL is considerably more popular than hockey's been in the UK since the 1930s.

I doubt Sky are interested - it'll be back on ESPN America next year...which is just where it should be.

 

[Brodie]

but isn't the point of international games to grow the sport? What's the point of playing them in places where hockey is already popular?