Pretty true. In my country it is same. There are plenty of the garbled informations about KHL in the media and than in the public opinion. It is still same: KHL is oligarchs league, arenas are empty, arenas are old, referees are corrupt, finally - quality of the hockey is low (I have heard "opinion" - quality of the czech and slovak leagues is equal to KHL
I have one collegue: he doesnt like KHL, but he doesnt watch KHL games. So, I said him - ok, so lets try watch any game and you see. Answer - no, because I watch only NHL and I dont care about KHL. But he everytime say that KHL is absurd and weak league. Ok, I told him, but in the NHL are weak games too (like in every league) - Yes, he answer, but it is NHL, so it is OK
so I think, this absurd article is same like discussion with my collegue.
Btw, today I watch games Avangard - Loko and Ak Bars - Magnitka, and now I watching NHL Buffalo - Winnipeg, and hockey level is very simillar IMO. But what is NHL? NHL is very good hockey and marketing. And marketing is maybe no. 1 in professional sport.
I put your reply here, not to be offtopic in original thread.
I dont follow slovak/czech media about KHL anymore, my only KHL sources are russian. Slovak/czech hockey/sport journalists dont know russian, dont follow the league too closely, dont know how russian hockey journalists work. Their only source of KHL infomations are articles translated by state agencies in SVK/CZ, which translate them only if 1) there is scandal in the league (not paying salaries, Loko disaster, low attendance in China etc) 2) someone leaving KHL for NHL or Kovy/Datsyuk caliber players signing in KHL. So it is limited amount of information and our journalists can not read original russian articles and make their own analysis because... they dont speak russian. Ordinary fans in SVK/CZ dont speak russian as well, so their only KHL informations are written in our languages by our crappy journalists.
I can imagine the same problem is in NA as well, because Americans/Canadians dont speak russian in many cases, their only information about KHL is if the NA journalist like Mirtle or Malamud (who dont follow KHL closely if at all) write something.. and they write only negative things about KHL.
Marketing - yeah, it is a problem of KHL. There was almost no marketing under Medvedev, Chernyshenko has tried to do some change, but it is not easy. Their main market is Russia, which TV market is not developed. TV revenues should be main income for league/clubs, so if your main market is not developed, your TV money is small. Like in KHL. Russia had federal public sport channel (VGTRK´s Rossiya2) before 2015, but the channel was crappy. It was something like slovak RTVS 2 (formerly STV 2), one channel broadcasted documents, soap operas a if there was important sport event, there was sport on the channel as well. Russia had private paid sport channels/network before 2015 as well, but was not available for everyone (paid channel, you know), it was owned by Gazprom Media. Chernyshenko became Director General of Gazprom Media at the same time when he became President of KHL (Nov 2014). His role as head of Gazprom Media (in sport bussiness, because Gazprom Media owns non-sport channels as well) was to establish federal sport network by merger of federal sport channel (VGTRK) and Gazprom Media sports channels. The new network is MatchTV, it consists of MatchTV (publicly available) and paid subchannels (Match Igra etc). The change, if compared to pre 2015 era, is that MatchTV holds almost all rights for sport events and there is no bidding war for sport rights (of Bundesliga etc) in russian market.
Russian local channels, broadcasting matches of local teams, differ city/region by city/region. Therefore we have SD from some cities/clubs and great TV coverage from St.Petersburg. You know, local broadcasters make tv signal. So if you dont have experienced crew or HD equipment in the region, the coverage is bad...
Chernyshenko said that KHL´s TV rights are undervalued. They want to improve it, but it all depends on regional channels, see above.
They want to increase TV revenues by selling TV rights to new markets in Asia or expanding worldwide (especially in Europe or I guess NA). But foreign broadcasters want quality of the coverage (HD etc), what is sometimes a problem. The league wants to instal microphones to boards, but some arenas are not able to do that (too old). Dont know how expensive is to instal them.