Yes that is a much better comparison about 3 times the ratings for post season for NHL. NHL 417k 2017/18 season has a regular season average that is a little less than 1.5 times MLS current average 281k, BUT that gap is getting smaller every year as MLS regular season audience growth is far outpacing NHL's. MLS needs to do a better job of expanding it's Playoff Audience beyond just MLS Cup. They gotta be MUCH better at that.
That said at the time of their last TV deal in 2014 MLS was able to get basically half of what NHL got for rights fees in the US with much lesser far weaker TV numbers than now in 2014, which speaks volumes to were broadcasters view the leagues. Some of that can be put on NHL stupidly locking themselves into a exclusive deal but as I said earlier they have been in the NBC deal so long that the sports landscape is so congested and a much different place. I'm not sure they can capitalize on a far better TV deal without being relegated in coverage. They can get slightly more TV money at the cost of losing their preferred status on NBCSN the "Hockey" channel. Having non exclusive deals for leagues like NHL/MLS are long term dividends, you get multiple networks involved and you multiply your monies over each TV deal.
In a exclusive deal NHL won't get more than $500 mil per yr, if they split the deal NBC would significantly cut that offer because why pay more for less? So NHL will have to count on another partner overpaying or matching the current market offer of say $250-300 mil from NBC to get a total of around maybe $650 mil per yr US.
Do you hope you can get $650 mil from ESPN/FOX and lose the preferential treatment we get with NBC? Which would IMO hurt any potential growth or do you take the $ 500 mil with NBC hope you can patch up the relationship and put in common interest clauses BUT maintain our preferred status on a network? That's a very interesting debate that I think we should be having.
Now I'm not saying MLS is more popular than NHL just that its growing and making SMART moves their Commissioner Don Garber wisely decided with their TV deals back in the day in 2014 they could only get $50 mil per yr from a exclusive deal but if they could keep divvying up their TV package to networks they could get way more money in the long term. I've been a fan of Bettman but his biggest weakness has been TV deals. We have 1 TV partner most other Major US leagues have 3 including MLS. We've been locked into this deal so long it will be very hard to just move to another network because the sports tv market is more crowded than we think. Networks are not gonna be in a rush to bump off cheaper sports programming that get equal to or larger ratings just to pay NHL more money. That's exactly what happened with ESPN back in the day. We had the strike and then they discovered they could get better or just about the same ratings while paying less for other programming.
MLS has the benefit of packaging their TV rights with some of the bigger soccer events on TV. Networks know if they want to have favorable negotiations for the WC they have to play nice with MLS. That won't change anytime soon.
Last edited:
