KHL business aspects discussion

[Jussi]

Just as I was watching Anzhi-CSKA in football, I thought whether ice hockey is more popular than football or not, in Russia... Which one do Russian people favour more? I'd like to see figures (TV ratings, number of people watching the sports etc.) if possible. I know Russia is not an "ice hockey only" country and they have strong football teams but I've always thought that the interest in football is never good enough, except for a handful of teams. Second division, my absolute favourite as Krasnoyarsk plays there, is total mess in terms of attendance.

Anyway, long story short, is hockey more popular than football in Russia? If not, how are the figures? I'd be especially happy to hear from local Russians about their preferences - for example, would you and your friends choose a KHL play-off game or CSKA-Zenit? What is the general trend for people?

Football rules everywhere in Europe (except Finland).

 

[BalticWarrior]

Football rules everywhere in Europe (except Finland).

Latvia as well, and arguably Slovakia too.

 

[vorky]

Dinamo Riga earned 624 608 euro last year, source

 

[malkinfan]

Dinamo Riga earned 624 608 euro last year, source

Good to see, but I am interested to know how much of the 12 mill Euro revenue is from major sponsors?

 

[BalticWarrior]

Good to see, but I am interested to know how much of the 12 mill Euro revenue is from major sponsors?

Probably something like 95 %

 

[Jussi]

Probably something like 95 %

Is it a another case of not spending all of the sponsor money?

 

[Acallabeth]

Comparing football to hockey

Anyway, long story short, is hockey more popular than football in Russia? If not, how are the figures? I'd be especially happy to hear from local Russians about their preferences - for example, would you and your friends choose a KHL play-off game or CSKA-Zenit? What is the general trend for people?

When talking about hockey's popularity, we need to understand that it's one of the longest running and most often televised sports of the year. When you have a 60 game season, 6-week playoffs, EHT, World Championship and an occasional NHL game in the morning, and it's mostly all the same players, it's hard to get excited for a regular game, and long series and long regular seasons decrease the amount of truly important matches.
RosGosTerror has much less games, is only shown on weekends, and best derbies can sometimes be expected for months. So of course my friends and I are going to watch CSKA-Zenit, unless it's a match that won't decide anything and the KHL alternative is an important elimination game.

Then again, there are some tendencies that affect football's popularity negatively:
- Russian football translations generally have more competition, because Match-TV broadcasts eurocups and foreign championships (though there's a large portion of fans who are not interested in other leagues and don't watch them), and also the weekend timing;
- nogomyach overall has a very negative image because of all scandals, corruption and national team fails;
- football stadiums are notorious for being a place you'd rather not bring you family to, and fans are regarded as a bunch of agressive morons;
- after RFPL had made the decision of selling the broadcasting rights to the NTV+, which was inconvenient, didn't provide the quality of broadcasting that was worth being paid for and had its commentators insulting their viewers, football's popularity declined sharply;
- and the idiotic decision of moving the season to the autumn-winter schedule forced people to attend open stadiums in February and December.

All this contributed to RFPL's attendance declining to ~11k after having peaks at 13,25k in 2007 and 13k in 2011/2012. Which is, of course, a lot more than the KHL has, but 30-40k arenas have something to do with it, with only 7 teams having average attendance above 10k:
[collapse=1]

http://www.sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/marselo_io_off/952604.html[/collapse]

Ratings are harder to assess in Russian, because cable/satellite TV isn't as wide used so far. But the estimates show a hard decline in football viewership during the recent years:

[collapse=2]

http://www.championat.com/business/...e-transljacii-zimy-2016-na-rossijskom-tv.html[/collapse]

Meanwhile, Tchernyshenko has repeatedly boasted of enormous ratingz for the KHL playoffs this spring:

Average ratingz have doubled last year's, the share increased by 32% and keeps jumping

http://www.khl.ru/news/2016/03/21/242257.html

The share for the 6th game of the KHL final series was as high as 11.8% which is unheard of in hockey

http://www.khl.ru/news/2016/04/19/307853.html
Match-TV also had record ratingz over that time.

Average KHL viewership in Jan-Feb 2016 was estimated 1.9M, which I think is pretty good, but doesn't compare to Champion's League, Europa League, Copa de Rusia, biathlon or even hockey World Juniors.

Which brings us to the fact that any domestic league gets demolished while being compared to international competitions, which are traditionally much more popular in Russia. If we watch 2014 and 2015 years, with 2014 obviously being an anomaly:
[collapse=3]2014:

Olympics-adjusted:

2015:

Football-adjusted:

[/collapse]

Euro-2016 is also esimated to have great ratings and shares around 28-30%.

So, as we can see,
- football is still easily the most popular sport in Russia, all of World Cup, Euro, domestic champioship, foreign championship and eurocups being ratings frontrtunners;
- national team hockey is probably 2nd, despite a loss in ratings to 2014 Olympic Figure Skating;
- occasinaly world title boxing or MMA (Povetkin, Lebedev, Emelianenko) can get ratings above any hockey as well;
- KHL has a hard time keeping up with season-long international competitions like biathlon world cup or figure skating grand prix;
- with that said, KHL playoffs are very promising;
- despite football's decline and hockey's growth in popularity in ratings, it's hard to imagine hockey overcoming nogomyach any time soon.

 

[Finnpin]

Dinamo Riga earned 624 608 euro last year, source

That's hard to believe.

 

[martin1983]

Latvia as well, and arguably Slovakia too.

Futball in Slovakia is one of two most popular sports (hockey and futbal, and I dont want to speculate which one is first). Is broadcoasted by 3 TV's and they have quite huge coverage, if you compere it to hockey. They broadcoast 2 league games/per week, all national team games, most of under 21 national teams games, 2 champions league games (including qualification if there is any slovak team), at least 1 uefa cup game per week, even some international tournaments / leagues which are not so popular in europe (few years back I saw Copa Libertadores games in Slovak TV, same games from Eredivisie).

From Olympic games in RIO, TV will broadcoast all futbal games (including womans futbal)

I really don't think you should count Slovakia as the exception.

 

[hansomreiste]

Acallabeth, you've pulled such an awesome vorky and enlightened me so much that my skin colour has grown darker and ultras are running at me with bottles and sticks. Thank you.

I'm from a country where football is worshipped and I have also been a football fan for years, even though now my priority has shifted towards ice hockey (mostly because football as an industry is out of control and does not have much left to offer other than inflated stars and ugly games) but still I'm surprised to hear that football has so much ground in Russia or other Baltic & Eastern European states. I hope KHL will keep climbing and gaining more attention.

 

[BalticWarrior]

Is it a another case of not spending all of the sponsor money?

Almost certainly.

 

[martin1983]

Acallabeth, you've pulled such an awesome vorky and enlightened me so much that my skin colour has grown darker and ultras are running at me with bottles and sticks. Thank you.

I'm from a country where football is worshipped and I have also been a football fan for years, even though now my priority has shifted towards ice hockey (mostly because football as an industry is out of control and does not have much left to offer other than inflated stars and ugly games) but still I'm surprised to hear that football has so much ground in Russia or other Baltic & Eastern European states. I hope KHL will keep climbing and gaining more attention.

Why? Futbal here in Slovakia has long history, first teams was formed in 1898. First hockey teams was formed around 1919 - 1920. While hockey talents are on the retreat, futbal teams from First division (Fortuna league) sold only in this pre season 6 players under 20 years to teams in abroad leagues (and two of them was huge talents, Benes was selected to 50 most talented young players in world). While many hockey teams has debts, futbal teams are stable (healthy), while hockey national team has no bright future, in futbal we have tons of potentional in our under 21 national team.

Slovak Ice Hockey federation has missed the opportunity to attract more attention to hockey (from media, from parents, from children, from sponsors) after our successes in WC and this is the result. Popularity of hockey in Slovakia is slowly falling.

 

[Rigafan]

The whole hockey v soccer argument is usually pointless though. 99% of hockey fans you find on the internet are extreme pessimist and hockey is going to vanish overnight! As well as 99% of people looking at a soccer team with a 50k capacity stadium and the local hockey team with an 8k capacity and saying "well obviously soccer is more popular"

We need real facts and figures that we will probably never be able to see.

I'd disagree that only Finland is a 'hockey' country though. Latvia, Swiss, Sweden, Belarus, Russia I'd put up there as hockey places. I don't think it matters that other sports might enjoy more popularity on TV I think it matters about the investments and the quality of the hockey on display. Nobody can argue that there is a hell of a lot of invest in hockey, especially in Russia and Belarus.

 

[vorky]

please delete

 

[vorky]

Social media are part of bussiness nowadays, so I compared league´s accounts of KHL, Champions Hockey League (CHL), Euroleague basketball.

As you can see, KHL is growing on all platforms. Fast growing is twitter in russian, for those who dont follow them - KHL organised the promoting action called "one day in life of ". One hockey player (Lyuduchin), a linesman and coach (Abols) run KHL twitter account for one day in july (21th, 24th, 26th). Growth 1909 within 11 days (and in offseason) is nice one.

Facebook is not so popular in Russia as VK (VKontakte), therefore the big gap among them.

KHL needs to work with english language platform too, especially twitter & facebook. There is a big potential in my opinion.

 

[Rigafan]

KHL needs to work with english language platform too, especially twitter & facebook. There is a big potential in my opinion.

THIS

What every happened to the plans of having select games with English commentary? I remember seeing the option on KHL Gamecentre, usually during SKA or DYN Moscow games with "RU" or "ENG" but English was never available.

Their English Daily KHL Update is good but haivng say a select game each week or something with English commentary would help them a lot.

 

[Jussi]

The whole hockey v soccer argument is usually pointless though. 99% of hockey fans you find on the internet are extreme pessimist and hockey is going to vanish overnight! As well as 99% of people looking at a soccer team with a 50k capacity stadium and the local hockey team with an 8k capacity and saying "well obviously soccer is more popular"

We need real facts and figures that we will probably never be able to see.

I'd disagree that only Finland is a 'hockey' country though. Latvia, Swiss, Sweden, Belarus, Russia I'd put up there as hockey places. I don't think it matters that other sports might enjoy more popularity on TV I think it matters about the investments and the quality of the hockey on display. Nobody can argue that there is a hell of a lot of invest in hockey, especially in Russia and Belarus.

The talk was of countries where hockey is the number one team sport and in Europe, we're the clear number one on that front because our football sucks so baaaaad....

 

[Rigafan]

The talk was of countries where hockey is the number one team sport and in Europe, we're the clear number one on that front because our football sucks so baaaaad....

Which is a shame because imagine how great it would be to see FC Santa Claus in the Champions League (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FC_Santa_Claus)

 

[vorky]

As I said earlier social media are part of bussiness nowadays, especially in sport (hockey).
I made a research of KHL clubs social media accounts for July (started in the middle of month, so take it into account).

As you can see, only Medvescak&Slovan are above 100k fans in Facebook in total. Even the both clubs are not top on ice or budget, they are very important for KHL in digital point of view, which KHL wants to develop in future. That is a reason, IMO, why KHL allowed both clubs to participate in next season (even they still have debts, but want to pay it before season starts). And the same reason can be used for Spartak´s comeback (the club is really good in social media sphere) after one missed season due to finance.

Facebook is not as popular as VKontakte in Russia, that is a reason why russian clubs dont have so many fans here. Btw does FB account of Neftekhimik&Lokomotiv work for you?

VKontakte (VK) is russian "version of Facebook". SKA is sole leader in VK (total number of fans). Over 50k fans have Minsk, Torpedo, Sochi, Ak Bars, Magnitka, Traktor, Avangard, SY Ufa, Sibir. I would like to underline Sibir who is one of best in KHL in social media (and TV regional ratings if I remember). No suprise here because Novosibirsk is one of biggest russian cities (and they really need new arena).

July growth: SY Ufa is best, almost two times better than second SKA. Does anybody know the reason for such good performance? I read that the club organised action "your green summer" for fans (posting pics with clubs merchendising on social media), but I dont know details.

Instagram, I have total numbers. You can see the best teams in pic. SY Ufa, Admiral, Avangard are close to top 6. Clubs below 10k fans should work harder. Dont know how popular is Instagram in Russia (and world as a whole), so I can not predict how potential is there if any.

I dont think that it is important how many subscribers KHL clubs have on youtube. The more important is how often they post new videos (and how quality). I dont follow YT closely, so I can not judge. On the other hand it is good trend that KHL clubs broadcast their preseason games (and even from abroad - Finland).

As you can see, SY Ufa and Traktor are leaders for july growth.

Last but not least, Twitter (just total numbers). KHL clubs (and league as well) have worked really good/well with twitter since last season. Spartak, SKA, Lokomotiv are above 100k fans. Then there is a big gap. For those who wonder why Traktor has only 200 fans, I have an explanation - club launched new twitter account this offseason, I dont know reason. But club had cca 30k fans in previous account. Slovan had 7632 fans on twitter which is in english, maybe their strategy because twitter is not so popular in Slovakia, so have bigger potential if being in english language.

I would welcome constructive discussion.

 

[Killion]

As I said earlier social media are part of bussiness nowadays, especially in sport (hockey). I made a research of KHL clubs social media accounts for July (started in the middle of month, so take it into account).....

Nice work vorky.

 

[Rigafan]

Very nice Vorky. It's always great to see!

 

[Milos Krasic]

I dont think that it is important how many subscribers KHL clubs have on youtube. The more important is how often they post new videos (and how quality). I dont follow YT closely, so I can not judge. On the other hand it is good trend that KHL clubs broadcast their preseason games (and even from abroad - Finland).

As you can see, SY Ufa and Traktor are leaders for july growth.

Traktor's Youtube is VERY good. The best I've seen even compared to SKA or Salavat. Their preseason game versus Amur has over 13,000 views and their game against Red Star Kunlun has nearly 44,000 views!!!!

 

[Milos Krasic]

Facebook is not as popular as VKontakte in Russia, that is a reason why russian clubs dont have so many fans here. Btw does FB account of Neftekhimik&Lokomotiv work for you?
.

Have you contacted the clubs to let them know the Facebook page doesn't work? I would even be happy to do an unofficial Neftekhimik page if they are more focused on VKontakte.

 

[Alessandro Seren Rosso]

I would welcome constructive discussion.

Remove those "-" in front of numbers, as it looks like they are in negative

 

[vorky]

Have you contacted the clubs to let them know the Facebook page doesn't work? I would even be happy to do an unofficial Neftekhimik page if they are more focused on VKontakte.

I asked some Loko fans and facebook work for them. Dont know why it does not work for me.