Yes the NCAA has advanced and made it a much more attractive choice. But college hockey athletes in America are NOT close or near the equivalent of football or basketball players.
At a school like Michigan, football is bringing in about 60-65% of their annual athletics department money. They also get to spend about 25% of the budget each year and there are dozens of sports to pay for. The hockey program at Michigan meanwhile brings in? Less than 1%..or about 3 million per year
The highest revenue earning department seems to be Boston University at 8 million per year, followed by Wisconsin at about 5 million
So yes while the top hockey programs are more stable than the overall top of the CHL, there are only a handful of programs that actually make legit revenue. When you consider that these programs must offer full ride scholarships valued at roughly 200-300k (if a player stays for 4 years) then that is where majority of this revenue is going
Technically speaking these college kids are already making money off that revenue with free rides. And I can tell you that there are LIMITED amounts of players that would actually be able to make real money off their name/likeness. The US doesn’t value college hockey. It is a not a regular feature on ANY television program. Most people don’t care and so most college hockey players will never benefit from name/likeness any more than what OHL players already are and have been able to benefit off of (i.e. doing advertisements or signing endorsements or contracts with companies).
What would potentially become a bigger issue is if the US ever fixes their rising cost of education in this country. If public universities like Michigan become significantly cheaper (which is a high topic of conversation in this country) then theoretically college programs will have more revenue to dish out on their players rather than using that money to pay for their scholarships/academic funds
What the CHL needs to do is change their approach. This entire COVID PR situation was flat out embarrassing and handled poor from the jump. Like it’s pathetic how bad they botched their PR here. Branch and company need to go imo.
The CHL needs to focus more on increasing their fan support. I don’t pretend to know how but they should be hiring new minds to help them advance their approach. Maybe it’s through TV/media deals. Maybe it’s through changing their current structure to enhance rivalries. Maybe it’s through hosting the Memorial cup in some fresh cities. Idk do something. Do multiple things. They may also need to adjust their age structure and the limits they have on OAs/Imports. What about allowing teams to hold 3 imports? Why not. Would potentially increase some talent that comes over here
You are correct with respect to changing their approach to target market. Right now it is geared towards kids and families. The reason for this is the cost and how it is comparable to other family activities.
They need to start to market the players better but as many have suggested, if they start to market the players (as future stars), is it then opening the door for challenging the Amateur scholastic athlete designation? I don’t know but it is possible.
The NHL in newer markets market their stars. People identify with elite athletes and find a connection with them. The OHL has a huge problem being able to make that connection. First, they only have elite star level athletes for very short periods of time. It is hard to market an elite 16 year old that was just drafted and if they can and the player is elite, the player is likely not int he league the full 4 years.
For this reason, the league generally markets the teams and entertainment to go against other entertainment options like going to movies. They offer family package offers. They make connections to Minor hockey and do groups and mini-games. The kids come so the parents also come with them. But, most parents could care less under that sort of promotion.
For smaller communities, the concept works much better because the entertainment options are less and the Team is much higher profile. But in larger markets, the teams have a tendency of getting buried behind a plethora of other entertainment options. Look at all of the GTA area teams and how they struggled. They had no high profile identity.
But, again, it all comes down to amateur student athlete designation. How do you promote it without promoting the individual star players? It is hard.
Can you get millennials to spend 3 hours at a hockey game? The attention span is typically not there. Gen Z people have even less of an attention span. They won’t invest the time unless it is something they truly love to do. How do you build that sort of engagement?
In the end, I agree the league needs to find a way to better connect with people that have a higher level of disposable income and make it a higher profile activity where people feel like going to an NHL game is stupid by comparison when you consider the comparative cost. The value is there but not for everyone.
I will be interested to see what the league does next season to reconnect with their fan base while also trying to grow their fan base.
