Cropduster said:
your kidding, right? Of course that statistic is far from true, but let say it was even 75% (which is still a benefit of the doubt)-have you ever been here? Jackets fan WEST-does that mean you live in So Cal? That other 25% is still 3x as many people who live in Columbus, and that would be assumming 100% of Columbus cared which everyone on this board knows is so so far from true.
Yes, I live in Los Angeles.
Back in February, on KTLA 10 o’clock news the news achors were bantering about how they didn’t realize the Kings and Ducks weren’t playing after a 10 second blurb about the season being cancelled. Which is understandable, since most nights their sports coverage never mentioned the NHL. I doubt that would change without or without Crosby. Either team could win the Stanley Cup and it wouldn't even merit a mention.
I've been just amazed by the lack of support of teams here in LA. I've moved around frequently (I've lived in New York City, Orlando, went to college at Ohio State, and almost 6 years in Los Angeles) and I've never seen less dedicated fans. It's no wonder there is no longer a football team in Los Angeles.
Just because there are more people in So Cal doesn't mean there's a bigger potential market. I've been to many Mighty Ducks games when there were only a few thousands people there. There is no interest if they aren't winning.
Fans without a true understanding of hockey aren't going to understand that Sidney might need a few years to develop. And there are so many other teams in Southern California if the Kings and Ducks aren't winning.
The atmosphere in Columbus is far more condusive for hockey. It's a sports obsessed area. And Columbus is within 2 hours drive of Cincinnati, Cleveland and Toledo. It's taken me 2 hours to get to Staples Center in the friggin' traffic around there. So the market for the Jackets is considerably larger than just Columbus. The other benefit of Columbus is the 50,000+ Ohio State students that graduate and spread throughout the country. There's a group of about 30 Jackets fans that meet that the Ducks and Kings games that are almost all OSU grads. That number will keep growing.
The Jackets have been terrible and nearly every game has sold out. OSU hockey also frequently sells out. These aren't good teams and they still sell out. Compare that to a few years ago in Anaheim when most games during a weekday looked like a ghost town. (but the lack of any lines were really nice)
I've also been involved in youth hockey in Ohio and now Southern California, which is the real sign of how much of a growing market there is. There is such a strong youth hockey program in Columbus, even before the Blue Jackets. Here at my local rink in So Cal, they're struggling to find enough kids to play. That's indicative of the lack of interest in hockey.
Whether Crosby plays in a big or small market, it's not to save the NHL. Making Crosby successful will help considerably, since the NHL needs a marketable star. They need a player that's highly visable on ads for Gatorade or Wheaties boxes or whatever. Hopefully Crosby could be that one. But he needs to develop into that type of player and carry a franchise by his current abilities not by the number of goals he scored in juniors.
Merely putting Crosby in a large market like LA or NYC isn't going to immediately turn into a boom for that team like some people expect. "Come see Sidney Crosby, the 18 year old struggling to adjust to the NHL" will not attract any non-hockey fans in LA or NYC to buy tickets. The problem is that some at the NHL have such a low understanding of how to market hockey that I wonder if they understand that.
