Jazz said:
That is wrong, and not healthy for the sport in the long-run. What happens when the Flyers have a few bad years (which is more likely in a cap-world where you can't buy yourself out of troubles)? Everyone abandons the team until the next upswing?
Ok, let me ask you this: Why can other sports have fans of other cities, yet hockey can't (in the US)?
they continued to sell-out the Spectrum in philly when the team went downhill in the early 90's. Flyer fans are easily the most loyal of the groups down here... as much as the Eagle fans might like to argue against this, it wasn't too long ago that games were at risk to get blacked-out here.
well, you got the 4 "major" sports.
1. Baseball - Football has passed Baseball in many respects. however, there remains a very strong connection to the US culture here, for many reasons. the largest advantage is that Baseball is a very accessible sport to people growing up (pretty much everyone has the ability to play in some form of youth league), so there is a connection to the sport itself that goes beyond simply watching it. people know what it's like to throw, hit, and catch a baseball... people aren't intimidated by the game itself (hockey can be confusing... i think we've all had to explain something to someone in the past), so on and so forth.
Baseball's biggest advantage, and greatest weakness is casual fans. the number 1 reason why Baseball took such a huge hit after their strike that killed the WS was that they lost many of the "casual" fans for a number of years...
The NHL's greatest weakness is the absolute
lack of casual fans... However, the addendum to this is that the NHL's greatest strength is that the fans that do exist are
extremely passionate... a fact the owners took advantage of in the lockout... they KNEW we would be back.
2. Basketball - has actually been on a decline... however, it has obvious strength in certain urban markets and is another sport where people grow up with the sport and have a connection to it... casual fans exist, once again, because they understand what is going on...
3. Football - not even worth dealing with... so far and above the other leagues it's a near joke. Football enjoys being very much a part of the american cultural experience growing up (HS Football games, College Football Games being big aspects of the schools...). Football is also easy to watch casually, you only need to devote one/two days of the week to watch a football game... not to mention football simply works the best on TV of the top 4.
then there is hockey... no one really grew up with the sport. this is changing (i'm 25 and the ability to play hockey has exploded in the philadelphia area -- both roller and ice), but it isn't going to see real results until 20 years down the road. therefore people are attached to the TEAM, not the sport... they haven't played the sport, they just like watching their team play... helps that the flyers win a lot too.
so i think the growth of
playing the sport will help grow fans that just watch hockey... but i don't think watching the Olympics is going to help create that. i think it's a problem to get people watching when you are already asking them to watch 82 games and then playoffs of the team they actively care about...
for the record, the Flyers get better TV-ratings than the Sixers or Phillies...
