NHL to start Spanish language coverage of league starting in October

[jonathan613]

Location is Eire - so Ireland (Republic) right? I mean you can't compare the situation for you to Hispanic speakers. With the most recent census saying that Eire has less than 100k daily speakers in a population of nearly 5m people. You use it to pass school then forget about it.

Spanish is one of the most used and spoken languages on earth, why wouldn't the NHL who has teams in heavily Hispanic area's want to try and pull in some extra supporters?

Hockey isn't native to Ireland or my country yet here we are!

I fully agree. The object is to grow hockey into a world wide sport. Just like with attempts in china, you are trying to cross cultural boundaries. Baseball certainly did not have the hispanic and asian following it does now when my parents were growing up in the 50's and 60's. Clearly, people watch spanish only networks and the idea is that you could get a few eyeballs in latin american countries to view hockey. Just like expansion to sunbelt areas of the us, the long range plan for hockey has to be to go beyond its traditional origins. What traditionalists do not is that a big fish in a small pond can never become a really big fish. If hockey only cares about people living in canada and in the US above the mason-dixon line, it will not succeed in the long term.