@@harper-leightonscott4566 I think he's talking about being able to watch local teams play, like the Stars in Dallas. I think they're having serious problems with regional sports channels in the US. Dallas Stars are streaming all their games for free, cause they don't know if they're going to have a channel to be on. In Canada it's a non issue at the moment. Every teams games are televised in some way on TV in their own market. But I wouldn't be surprised if it goes the subscription route in the near future.
@@judistzoinkiski3395The black out areas are part of the licensing negotiations. And guess what? NHL has control over how they decide to license their own product.
Woohoo!! I'm part of the 1.4% from the UK and the 4.9% female. I feel special if rather lonely. As someone who came to hockey later in life, I think the game is really fun and entertaining: I described to my friends as football (soccer) speeded up without the boring bits and with a lot more violence. So highly marketable to new fans ;-). For us fans in the Europe, a plea to the NHL to have more matinee games on weekends to give us a chance to watch some games live: we would definitely pay for the privilege. And getting a global series game in the UK would be AMAZING - I would pretty much do everything I could to attend, even if they were teams I hated.
The NBA, MLS & NHL needs to take notes that there might be interest in their games (maybe besides the MLS) here in the UK due to how americanised their culture as become over the years.
Brother I’m British, hockey is massive over here. It’s about time North Americans started to realise that! A global series over here would easily fill the 02 area in London, or the Nottingham ice centre (best and only dual-rinked arena in UK)! The amount of fans would literally balloon for the NHL, especially considering we’re a English speaking country so that cuts out the language barrier issue you could have with other countries around the world
I’m hoping that the league returns to the UK someday. Perhaps maybe some games at EIHL arenas outside London would be nice as well. Maybe my team the LA Kings will be sent again.
@@judistzoinkiski3395I hear the rationale of “just using a vpn” a lot on that subject. Thing is, most people just don’t use them. The average Joe isn’t gonna know about them, much less how to use them, or that they’re applicable to NHL games. It’s a band aid that only a small percent of people are even aware of
As one of the 4.9% female and 40% from the USA (and one of the paid subscribers), I have to say I love your channel. I found it during the 2022 playoffs and have been a devotee ever since. You provide such insightful commentary. And how could I hate a fellow fan of my favorite team Dallas?
Toronto and the New York Rangers in London is being discussed, with the O2 Arena pegged for it. Those two teams did face each other in London before, back in the 90s, with them being preseason games, and another matchup was thought of in the early 2000s, when Toronto had Steve Thomas with them. A regular season game in London with those two teams would most definitely be a draw.
I grew up in a Mexican household with absolutely no hockey tradition. I really wasn’t even into sports at all growing up. I didn’t even know what hockey was until I was in my 20’s when I felt I needed another hobby. Just randomly, I happened to find footage from Fight Night at The Joe and I was instantly hooked. My passion for it grew and grew until I brought all of my friends and family to games. I’m so happy the NHL is reaching out to the latino community because it’s ignited a passion in me that’s given me so much purpose and direction. This sport shouldn’t be as niche as it is. I hope this campaign in Mexico brings lots and lots more viewers for the league and hockey in general. Hockey is so beautiful.
If you're talking about Akane Shiga, I believe she just recently signed in Europe. But I agree I think Japan could be a good place to grow the game, especially with their women's team ranked in the top 10.
I have been living in Japan for the last 10 years in the Osaka area, I 've played here a lot, and I don't feel the game is really growing unfortunately. Although that might be just my beer league bubble. We've got a reduction of the number of teams in the area
My local ECHL team just signed a player from the Japanese national team. A player (I believe on the second line) from another team I saw them play was also from Japan. It's growing
I love how you mention watching highlights for football as i had to watch hockey highlights for the NHL years ago as accessing viewership for games was too difficult! And of course the fact the average game starts at midnight for me (im from Scotland)
I'm part of the 1.4% of the UK and fully agree they could get so many more fans here. I had to travel to Sweden last winter to just catch a game and the crowd was full of so many others who'd done the same
100% - you put some of that NHL money and marketing prowess behind the EIHL and you easily reach a load of new fans in the UK imo. Get some games shown on the telly instead the abysmal current setup and I could really see the sport as a whole becoming even more popular here.
American Female viewer, lifetime hockey fan, longtime channel lover! ❤ I give absolutely zero rips about women’s hockey lol. I’m always amused when people equate interest in women’s sports with female fan base. I want to watch men play, full stop. I love a fast-moving, full-contact game… which is why I also like American Football. I’m from a Swedish-American family, Grew up surrounded by hockey - RJ practically narrated my childhood via the Sabres lol - I went to a private highschool… we had (have) a private rink with ice down all year, we billeted young players of multiple nationalities… and I had poorer friends too who somehow always managed to figure out how to cobble together gear in order to play. On the flip side my husband grew up in the SW desert, knew absolutely Jack about hockey when he moved up here, and now as a fan he wishes he’d gotten introduced to it young because he probably would have loved to play it (instead he was a national champion offensive lineman 👌🏻) As for expansion, I have nothing against it on principle… but growth just for the sake of growth is not necessarily a good thing. There’s plenty of growth to be done in the existing markets. And expanding while ignoring your existing customers’ wants and interests is like running the tap while keeping the drain open as far as a business model. As always appreciate your nuanced discussion THG! Your content remains the best on TH-cam after all these years, thanks for your consistency and high quality content Edited for grammar lol
One of the interesting things about a lot of PWHL fans (and a lot of women's team pro sports in general) is that they found that many of them were previously not fans of pro sports in general. I do think for young girls (or for parents of those girls) there's a correlation as well but just like Canadians and USports football it's not a guarantee that just because you're a Canadian who likes watching US college football you're going to tune into McMaster vs. Carleton lol
@@kiroolioneaver8532 I’m hesitant to trust surveys too deeply (I assume that’s how they collected this data?) given the heavy bias inherent in them. I’ve certainly never been polled nor has anyone I know and I’ve been in/around sports for almost 40 years. Ultimately I’m happy to have people attracted to the sport, I just don’t want to see the the heart of the sport *change* just to capture different audiences, and misconceived notions about what does actually attract a specific audience can drive that sort of thing. 🤷🏼♀️
As you may guess from my avatar here i'm a hockey fan from the UK lol... part of the 1.4% :) I love your show and watch as much as I can, likewise with the NHL itself I watch a fair bit, however i'm not sure if your aware but here in Britain its not that easy to watch it. For many years now its been on pay-per-view TV channels with a different name every few years, i'm not sure which channel it is on this year as I now stream games online instead but way back in the 90's and early 2000's one or two games per week were shown, with I believe all of the Stanley Cup Final games on one of our "terrestrial" TV channels, (we had five of these, BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, with the latter showing NHL games with our own canadian ex-pat pundits). So the NHL isn't easy to watch in the UK sadly and hasn't been for some time... we do have Ice Hockey in Britain but its not in a great condition, there are actually two governing bodies, the Elite Ice Hockey League (EIHL) which is run by the ten owners of the ten teams within that league, they have mostly imports from abroad playing on their teams but the best British players too. The EIHL is a completely seperate entity to the English Ice Hockey Association (EIHA) which runs the rest of the teams in England (Scotland has its own Associated too). The EIHA is even split further into a Premier League made up of the more affluent teams which include a good smattering of imports and very good British players. Next in the Tiers of British Hockey are the National Ice Hockey Leagues (NIHL) which again is split, both by a North and South divide and also into Division One and Division Two, D1 teams have a couple of imports (one or two, but a lot of times none) and good local talent plays on their local teams, its semi-professional (as a lot of Premier League players are too) and some even pay-to-play in D1, next is the D2 where virtually no imports play and most players pay-to-play... however some of the best games of hockey I have ever seen have been D1 games so the standard is actually pretty good. Ice Hockey is THE most popular indoor sport in Britain, we have Basketball Leagues, Snooker, Darts, Indoor Bowling and Ice Hockey is the best attended and yet probably 90% of the people on the street wouldn't know it exists as a sport let alone its popularity in Britain... the EIHA and EIHL don't get on with one another, neither is run very well and despite being the most popular indoor sport for years its only been on Pay-per-View channels and this season isn't on any kind of TV at all, its live stream pay-per-view only. Ice Hockey used to be a lot bigger, in fact where I am from near Durham in County Durham, we used to have a team, the Durham Wasps... despite the squad being bought and moved and the rink closing in the mid 90's the Durham Wasps still have more facebook fans than some British Elite League teams... about 10-12 years ago a game was played between ex-players of the Durham Wasps and their local rivals Whitley Warriors... Whitley's Hillhead Arena can hold over 3000 people, not only was it packed but hundreds had to be turned away at the doors... and that was maye 20 years after the last game played at Durham. In certain parts the interest in Hockey is there, but for the most part in Britain IF a person knows it is a sport they are tell you "oh Ice Hockey, thats where you go to watch a fight and hope a game breaks out".
As a Mexican, the best way i believe to grow the came in Mexico is to promote teams where cities has more Mexicans/Hispanic communities, like Chicago, Los Angeles, San Jose, Miami and promoting Hispanic players now in the NHL like Auston Matthews
Lots of people are unaware that Auston Matthews mum is from Mexico; the Robertson brothers and Matt Dumba are of Filipino heritage, etc. The NHL does such a poor job marketing their players to draw in new and casual fans particularly in non-traditional markets
@@FischerFan Because they limit their opportunities for growth because they don't effectively market their individual players (particularly their personalities/backgrounds). The NHL is actually the most popular sport's league in the world with the most prominent/high profile people of Filipino descent. That's a huge untapped market of potential fans (both in Canada, the US, and overseas) but again many in those communities don't even know that those dudes (the Robertsons, Dumba) are of Filipino origin. If the NHL better highlighted that fact that's more people you can attract to be fans of the game. The NBA, MLB, and even NFL (which has players wear the flags of their country of background on their helmet) are leagues that understand this.
proud female THG viewer here :D i got into hockey from my friend last season, but your videos have been a god send for learning the game and many players! also have been keeping up with the pwhl, very excited for the team names to be released tomorrow. go stars!!
Im one of the 1.4% of your UK viewership and you are 1000% correct about the UK being a market the NHL can real hit, everyone I introduce to the sport loves it, theres a lot of synergy with Football (soccer) and that goes a long way to converting UK fans to hockey
Woohoo being part of 4.9% of your audience. Love your channel. Likely with the introduction of the PWHL (also a huge fan so far) more women will be drawn in.
Big fan of hockey and the NHL here in England since being exposed to it working on American bases in the 80s . Saw pre season games at Wembley with the Blackhawks and leaf's. We then got a couple of games a week on free TV Then more on general sports channels on satellite. But after the 2005 lock out we lost free TV reason claimed was a massive increase in fee's and on satellite/cable the games moved to another fringe channel with poor coverage and they refuse to show the original intermission shows for some reason Just highlights of other games and adds. Great channel Shannon watch it daily
Yeah premier sports f us with the intermission stuff, during the SCF it was killing me that I wasn’t able to listen to the intermission reports and was just stuck watching the steelers win the play offs over and over again
I’m one of the 5% - it’s always interesting to me when I see lower percentages of female fans, because so many of the hockey fans I know are also female. I think more than having exhibitions and international games, the NHL needs to enable potential fans to stumble upon a game. That’s basically how I got into the sport in 1993. No one in my family was into the sport at all, I just happened to accidentally see a rare game on I think ABC. Nowadays, it usually takes an effort to watch
There is a new hockey manga called Dogsred written by Satoru Noda, author of the successful Golden Kamuy series. I think it would be cool for the NHL to do some sort of cross promotion with the series to grow the game in Japan.
The main problem with most countries is that they don't have a proper winter, hence no natural incentive to put on a pair of skates. Hockey arenas that can sustain ice all year long cost a LOT of money, so there needs to be high participation fees. Football (European) and many other sports are super cheap to start, can be played almost anywhere and are safer, so I think hockey will remain a niche sport in which there are 7-8 countries that seriously compete and the rest will retain their semi-pro or amateur status. Regarding Italy, their new head coach is Jukka Jalonen, the most successful Finnish head coach ever.
Exactly. Too many people on this discussion are ignoring the factors of climate reality and consumer demand. Both you and Shannon have mentioned the factor of the cost of hockey and that is why even Canada now has more kids registered in soccer than in hockey. Yes, hockey will never go beyond the status of niche sport in some counties, including those in temperate parts of the world. People who think hockey should succeed in the tropics should remember the reasons why counties like Mexico, Colombia, and DPR Congo are not known for downhill skiing, either.
As an Aussie, Australian NHL pages saw huge boosts of people joining off the back of last years game. I was so sad it wasn't the B's 😢 But I think with the right marketing you could easily make a team work in Mexico.
I'm from Portugal and I love hockey. I'm starting to pay attention to European leagues/Champions League. ( the UK, Sweden and a bit of the KHL). Unfortenately I do not know many portuguese hockey fans, we do have the best if not one of the best roller hockey teams in the world but not the same as ice hockey for me. Hopefully NHL can grow more in Europe and maybe adjust it's schedules for europeans to watch more live games.
I’m an Australian viewer, honestly thought we’d make up a noticeable percentage. Might sound strange but the big 4 sports in North America and major football leagues in Europe are really big here
Your channel came across,my TH-cam right before the start of the Kraken starting there first season and I watch you very regularly because you are not intimidating or condescending while I vastly Improved my very beginner knowledge . I would love to somehow be able to ask you about something that just happened on the ice but that would be too boring for the long time long time hockey fans. Please keep up the awesome work you,do!!
I didn't understand the global stuff until I watched Tom Grassi do his series visiting the places the NFL has played and will play this season outside the US. I get it now. Totally on board with NHL playing games outside of North America.
They key for getting hockey to work in non-traditional markets is probably the same as traditional ... sheets of ice. The differance is some parts of the world freeze for a part of the year, and the non-traditional markets don't. If the NHL undersatnds, "we can put a team pratically anywhere, but the key is putting down sheets of ice for youth hockey" they can win long term.
It has to be economical for a community to build an ice rink in the first place, the same way there is no point in constructing a curling club with dedicated sheets of ice if the demand for the product isn't there and never will be.
The NHL should have a world cup, and it should be 16 teams. And the NHL needs to host the first one in Europe. The lure of toronto or calgary/Edmonton and those ticket prices are hard to pass up, but growing the game means putting every second one in Europe The growth opportunities are Britain, France, Germany and even italy
I would hope the NHL takes smaller, more internal steps towards improving their product and making it more accessible before they make big moves like adding more teams. You gotta wonder how easily people in Mexico can even watch games.
I really do enjoy your channel- but I do think that I am perhaps not alone in having to take a pause on certain sports as a female hockey fan with hockey due to how sport leagues treat my community (lgbt+ & female). I grew up highly involved in national level sports (swimming), so I do have some passing experience with sports, but the stories coming out of the Blackhawks Org. and the Canadian Hockey JR Worlds team was just difficult to deal with. It isn’t that you don’t cover the incidents with great respect- you always did, but that hockey as an entity or these larger organizations seemed so eager for nil sanctions and coverups. It’s hard to celebrate a game that I really enjoyed when my mind couldn’t get past it.
I'm probably like a unicorn among your viewers - female viewer from Poland :D🦄 I think this a very interesting topic, but I have slightly different view on some of your points. I started watching NHL sometime at the beginning of 2022/2023 season entirely by chance. I work for a global company that has headquarters located in Minnessota and one day on the intranet there was an article about how one of our employees is a translator for Kirill Kaprizov. Like... what?! It sounded so bizzarre, that I started searching for more and more information about the player and the Wild, then came across game highlights on YT and eventually your channel. I have heard about NHL before (there was even one Polish player in the NHL - Mariusz Czerkawski), but I didn't pay any attention to it tbh. NBA has a quite a following in PL. It is probably because one of the TV channels has been showing games since many many years (since 90s for sure), so there was enough time for fanbase to grow (my husband is a fan since childhood as well). And one separate reason is Michael Jordan. NFL is a different story. The fanbase has been growing steadily, but they have this one event that brings people in front of TV. Even if you are not a NFL fan you'll watch Super Bowl. Even in Poland :D But NHL? Sure we've heard about Gretzky, but he is not nearly as recognized here as Jordan. Not for the ordinary people on the street. Poles don't recognize NHL teams, definately don't recognize current stars like McDavid, MacKinnon or Kutcherov. They might have heard about Crosby, Ovechkin or Jagr, but that's probably it. So what makes me, female viewer from Poland interested in NHL? Best players in the world. Their skills, but also their personalities. It doesn't mean that the game itself is not interesting. It means that I need to find this connection, create an attachment that will keep me wanting to come back and watch the game. I need to get to know "the characters" at least a little bit to be interested in "the story". As a new fan I don't have a historic connection to specific franchise, I create it via players. Great example of that is F1 and Drive to Survive. Even in Europe (original & still primary market for F1) this series brought back so many viewers that used to watch F1 and also great number of new fans. At firts they don't focus on technicalities of the sport. They focus on personalities, on "heros" and "villains". NHL needs that. Sure, we know DtS is drama-driven and fake a lot of times, but it did it's job. It started a 'fire', an interest, a need to stay with the sport to know who will eventually win. I know few people who started watching F1 because of DtS, stopped watching the show, but are still extremely engaged in F1. It starts with the interest about the personalities and stories, then the sport itself and then the technicalities. Let's be honest, on TV sports look more impressive. No matter if it is volleyball, football, american football, F1 or hockey the game is faster, more energetic, dramatic. It's a show. The players are suppose to look unreal, their skills out of this world. This does not help in creating fans of the sport who actually play it. Live sports help create those (where the game is slower, still entertaining, but the level looks reachable). It's awesome to see Global Series events in Europe, clinics in Mexico and I hope there will be more and more of those. But do you think that new fans of the NHL will be created by them? People who don't follow the sport probably won't know about the events and, secondly, those games are pricey as hell (at least in Europe), so not everyone will be tempted to spend money on something they might not enjoy. Question is - does the league want more NHL "engaged viewer" type of fans or "playing the game" fans? After I started following the NHL (which I can very rarely do live, as there are only few games once a week that are on a 'normal' hour in Europe and that's something that NHL should think about if they want to expand viewership here) together with my husband we decided to go for the first time to US for holidays. We have set up our stay in Miami in such a way to be able to experience one NHL and one NBA game. I knew nearly nothing about Florida Panthers (I recognized 2 players: Barkov and Tkachuk) and even less about the VGK, their oponents that night. Still, I enjoyed that game much much more than NBA. I felt safe in the arena, the atmosphere, the show, the cheering it was amazing! But would I be there if I wasn't at least a smallest bit an NHL fan already? I don't think so. Especially with the ticket prices that are on other arenas. Thank you THG for your videos which help me develop as an beginner NHL fan and also kept me sane when I was 100% sleep deprived when my daughter was born :D
As a UK hockey can it can feel like the NHL is uninterested in growing the sport here. Last time the NHL came here was 2007. I have no idea why the UK is overlooked as a potential market. NFL and NBA have been very successful in the last 10-15 years. I know the sport would grow if it had more exposure.
I never understood gatekeeping, Especially in Hockey. Literally only good things can come to the game as a result of more people being interested. More players, more teams better Olympics etc. This and the league being terrible at marketing itself and it's players is why the sport is having so much trouble expanding compared to every other big league. Equipment being expensive doesn't help either.
I am a Canadian born in Scotland and living again in Scotland. I watched your channel from behind the great firewall since 2019 (I lived in China for 14 years). I agree that the market here is under-served. Here in Aberdeen, the Lynx, a local team, sells out regularly and I watched both the Dundee Rockets (in the 80s when Garry Unger was the coach) and have watched a Dundee Stars game or two as well. As for the NHL, start times are awful for western games, but that's to be expected. When I lived in China, HNIC became HDIC (Hockey Night in Canada to Hockey Day in China) for Saturday games that I could comfortably watch on Sunday mornings.
Whatever contacts you eventually use to get your daughter on the zamboni at the Kings game can likely also get you in contact with Will Ferrell! Your contacts with the Ducks might be able to forward you their Kings' counterparts as well.
As a viewer living in a non-mentioned country, I'm very happy to be one of the few people living in Japan watching your videos. And I know personally half a dozens others who watch you. (Yes, we're all Canadians) Maybe if you learned Japanese that could help!😂
I’m unhealthily obsessed with both Hockey and NASCAR and when they crossover, I love it! I love it when the Spire Motorsports cars run Greenville Swamp Rabbits paint schemes!
As a hockey fan in Ireland, a massive issue with the NHL is the time difference and the time that they air the games. i understand that people have jobs and there is a very good reason to have games on around 7pm. It just means that the European hockey fans have to stay up until 3am to watch a full hockey game. If the NHL had a lot more games at 4pm on the weekend, it would help with European viewership.
When I was a sophomore in high school we played against a team from Japan that was tour around the states battling it out with American teams. We are in Iowa and they kept up and played great
To THG's point about expanding to new markets to grow the game. My fiancee and I live in Charlotte and had never thought about hockey until a friend of ours took us to a Checkers game. We fell in love with the game instantly and have watched every Hurricanes game since. It makes me wonder how many people out there would come to enjoy the game if simply given the opportunity to go to a game.
NHL needs to start having more afternoon games and selling those games to international TV stations. The only way to get people hooked on the product is to give them the product. I get that afternoon games are not preferred by North-American fans, but those are the only games that can ever be shown internationally with any hopes of having an audience. I'm Finnish, and for me, Eastern games usually start at 2 AM, and Western games somewhere around 4-5 AM, whereas afternoon games can start as early as 7-8 PM. Just have those early games regularly, give broadcasting rights to numerous different countries in EU, and I guarantee you you'll grow an international audience (larger than what it currently is). I get that it's not optimal for North-American fans, but North-American fans have it so incredibly easy already that they have no room to complain. You don't have to stay up nights every single day just to watch hockey. I do. Every single European NHL fan has to. And we'd love to see the league grow here too, but it's not going to happen unless you make games available to casual fans, instead of just the die-hards who don't mind ruining their sleep schedules over hockey.
I think another big issue that the NHL faces is also “following stars”. Think about every other pro sports draft. NFL, NBA, and MLB all drafted players after they’ve been in college for 4+ years and they’re already household names before they’ve even signed a contract and you’ll see a lot of them that next season. Meanwhile the majority of NHL players are drafted before college so all they do is take a photo in their jersey, go to rookie camp, then not be heard from again until 3-4 years later. It’s not conducive to building excitement for new players because we don’t even know their names until the draft and won’t hear about them again for months at a time.
Currently, the biggest problem for all NHL/hockey fans all around the world is to be able to even watch games they want... All the shenanigans necessary to watch games from different countries won't create any new fans... For us, who grew up with hockey it's okay to find ways to watch it, there is too many people who don't know anything about hockey, but it exists... We need a servise so we can watch games anytime anywhere... even better with all the statistics and custom highlights... it's 2024 (almost 25) omg... NHL's technology is like 2000....
Speaking on some of the players being real good people, Alex Tuch is an excellent example in our community. His AT9 foundation that he started and the toy drives he does are just examples. There is plenty of players that do this stuff and it's very uplifting to have them be pillars in their communities.
I was at the 2 games in Melbourne almost a year ago and the atmosphere was electric. Aussies love physical sports and I think the two sellouts for LA v Arizona shows there is a hunger to get the game in the Southern Hemisphere. I realise the issue is the long travel between North America and Aus
Expanding into northern Mexico near Culican doesn't seem too far fetched. It would definitly take a while but we saw how great first movers advantage was in Vegas.
I love to see Australia there , i am originally from Slovakia but moved here to Sydney , Australia 7 years ago and recently started playing ice hockey again , I can say that for Sydney City we have I think 4 rinks that I can think of ? Which is ridiculous but at the same time it obviously makes sense due to weather conditions..... and for comparison around 5mil people .... and 4 rinks ... At the rink that I play at we have 3-5 different beer league levels with different owners / admins 4-8 teams per league and avg lets say 15 people per team - so it all adds up ! There is heaps of Womens Hockey teams as well / mixed teams + other sanctioned competitions , ice skating etc. , but unfortunately there are way bigger sports such as NRL and AFL that all the Aussies love ( which again ) makes sense due to weather etc. I genuinely believe if they build bit more rinks it would help with development and growth of the sport - but its all about money , I would assume its not very cheap to build and maintain ice rink in Australia with our weather conditions lol. Anyway , much love keep the vids up .
I’m Hispanic, so I hope the NHL can grow the game in the Hispanic demographic. Hockey is a very underrated sport in the demographic, even though it’s very easy to get attached to once you get into it.
Speaking of WWE and NHL, this past Friday night SmackDown they were in Edmonton and Corey Perry was in the front row, was mentioned on commentary and also got involved. They also showed the Edmonton Oilers championship belt. It was being held by an Aussie but was taken by Kevin Owens (Canadian)
I wish they would just split A-Town Down Under. The breakup is taking too long. I thought Perry being the face was an odd choice, in Edmonton or not. We know he is a natural heel. :)
The NHL could have a basic streaming service. It would show series from a few years back. Plus have interviews of the current stars. They should also introduce programs for the kids to start learning the game
The biggest problem the NHL has with the UK is simply the time difference in my opinion. Games just end up way too late in the night here - which is a shame because without that I imagine it would be huge over this side of the pond. NFL has an advantage there due to having more reasonable game times. The NHL would do well to introduce weekly Sunday afternoon games in North America - have a Frozen Frenzy on a British streaming service and I think before time you’d see it become very popular over here.
@@TracyJean1972 yeah there’s a few, the North American holidays we get like four early ones as well, the problem I guess is the NFL because the NHL won’t compete against it in North America, I just wonder if they did something very brave and had Sunday lunchtime games (12pm for you, 5pm here) every weekend of the season (within reason) with as many teams as possible playing that time slot if they wouldn’t then create a regular spot for the Brits to plug into the product. In a Match of the Day style for football we could have a weekly catch-up show leading into the live games then and it would generate a lot of interest. People won’t get invested without it being regular I don’t feel sadly
@@TracyJean1972 haha I get that impression mate 😂 it’s a shame because there’s actually a lot of negativity around the Premier League over here so people are looking elsewhere when it comes to sport. The things which football is struggling with other here are things which hockey has right. The time is literally now if they wanted to make a strong play to grab a stronger European audience in general
Cost will always be an issue with hockey. Around me the biggest sports growing up were always football (both kinds) and basketball. Baseball and hockey just required more equipment to start. The others just required a ball and the right space, and there was always a park close by that could work
A Global Series game in Mexico City would work for a couple of reasons. One is that all of the other sports leagues in North America have done at least one game there in the past decade & each game has been well attended. Heck even NASCAR is going to Mexico City next year. The other reason why it would work is because of the outreach being done by Dallas, LA & Vegas with the learn to play clinics because by learning the game, fans especially younger ones will be more eager to attend a game involving their team & play the sport even if its ball or street hockey which is a good way to improvise given how expensive ice hockey is.
Speaking of global outreach, hello from Czechia! I've been into NA hockey since 2008-ish and a Wild fan since 2011/12. Mexico City is intriguing, I think it could be a great destination for Houston's AHL affiliate in case NHL goes to Houston
Lifelong NASCAR fan here: even I get tired of them. This just reminded me an ownship group former NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick is the owner group of some hockey team (it might be the Charlotte Checkers).
"Growing the game" is nearly always code for "make the owners more money." The focus should be on the product which will sell itself (as it has for years)
If the product sells itself, then you'll have to ask yourself why is the NHL fourth among North America's big four leagues? And so what if the owners make more money? It's not like there's an inverse correlation between popularity of a sport and ownership value (look at the Premier League owners lol). Fans will make anything sound easy and correct...
Idk about that man, I am from the Charlotte area of North Carolina, and there are still a lot of people who know more about the Checkers AHL team than they are even aware that an NHL team is in Raleigh. Part of the issue is also blackout zones, nobody is driving 3 hours to Raleigh to see every Hurricanes game.
@@neeltheother2342 There are many reasons why nhl is 4th. Some are intrinsic to the sport of hockey and some are not. I'm confident you can figure them out yourself and discern which is which. Owners can make all the money they want but the league should always focus on the quality of the sport they present. I'm glad you brought up soccer - why is that the biggest sport in the world? Why are impoverished 3rd world towns who've never heard of "growing the game" huge fans of European clubs? Also, did the NFL's decision to put a game in brazil come out of a desire to grow the game or mere greed? As you say, fans can make anything sound easy and correct
@@shawklan27 yeah, there's no reason why the Hornets and Panthers should be more popular than the Hurricanes. The Hurricanes are actually a good team that makes playoffs consistently for years now. Panthers and Hornets are trash, tho their colors and merch are fantastic. There should be no part of the Carolinas where people are unaware of their existence. It's purely the NHLs rules kneecaping the team from growing in their market. There are 15 million people in the Carolinas, they can easily be one of the most profitable teams in the NHL. Like, the Charlotte checkers first game back in the 50s drew a crowd of 40,000 people. People like Hockey here, they just support local minor league teams
It was a magazine type show here in the UK that got me into hockey c.2000 - league round up then last 2 periods if whichever game fitted the time slot. It didn’t seem to last for very long. They still do it for NFL - sucks they don’t do it for hockey.
As a follower from the uk i don't understand why the nhl isn't the most popular north american sport in the rest of the world.As a soccer fan it's the easiest to get into as i get the scoring,offsides etc as it's similar to soccer.The nfl,mlb which i follow as well took me a while to understand what was going on.The nhl should be targeting soccer fans as we'll get the game easy.
One of the issues Hockey has is a similar problem Baseball and American Football have that is the popularity of somewhat similar sport Baseball has 500 million fans worldwide but cricket has 2 and a half Billion American Football has 450 million fans worldwide but other full contact Football sports (rugby ,Australian Football, etc.) have 700 million Field hockey has 2 billion fans worldwide . Basketball does not have this problem.
The game can thrive in the UK. I mean, there are British hockey youtubers that cover the NHL. They don't have the numbers THG has, but they exist and its interesting to see how they view the game.
still early in watching the video, but the immediate thing that comes to mind about a team in Mexico City (aside from obvious stuff like language, currency difference, cultural difference, etc) is the altitude. Denver makes a big deal over being a mile high (~5300 ft above sea level), well it turns out Mexico City's altitude is 7,350 ft.
Yeah, growing the game beyond the current markets is not gonna happen. The game's too expensive, inaccessible, too conservative, and insular. Heck, just look at a bunch of the comments not wanting to grow the game and just serve the NA market.
( FIFA ) Football & Basketball are the future Behind that , Volleyball I personally would like to see *FUTSAL* grow , its World Cup is just coming up. For me it does everything better than Ice Hockey tbh.
I'm glad you brought up Mexico City. I think the Kings and Knights (maybe Dallas and another team) can make it happen. I know I do my part to grow the game by trying to get my family in Mexico into it. The NHL needs to make it easier for the fan base there to watch though.
Im sorry sir but im probably responsible for the 2000 views in mexico. Idk why i watch you every night to go to sleep and traveled for a year in mexico..... So yeah my bad
"You are not looking at Mexico City as a future expansion city" "Don't challenge Gary Bettman" - Anyone who wants the Nordiques back and hates Southern hockey teams
@sebastiencarrieres8825 if it did work out, the NHL could pull ahead in North American sports and by saying they're a three country league. Imagine if (IF) a Mexico City team won a cup before a Canadian team
Im a nhl and nascar fan. The only time i see hockey related stuff on a nascar, is spire, who owns a couple echl teams. Even wwe wrestlers appear at nascar and give the command or drive in the pace car.
I would rather see interest in hockey promoted in the US and Canada rather than oversees, tbh. Some of the places you mentioned, sure they'll get fans, but will there ever be any players big enough from some of those places to even play in the NHL? Soccer, a sport I can't stand, is popular worldwide because the players are small. I think it's a case of the grass is always greener sometimes. Let's stick to getting the sport better televised at home. :)
Know what would be a cool first step for the NHL reaching out to get fans? MAKE IT SO YOU CAN WATCH LOCAL TEAMS LOACALLY. Freaking Bally sports bs...
I don't think NHL controls local blackouts. That's an owner/tv thing.
@@harper-leightonscott4566 dont use logic to them they dont wanna hear it cuz it counter their crying.
@@harper-leightonscott4566 I think he's talking about being able to watch local teams play, like the Stars in Dallas.
I think they're having serious problems with regional sports channels in the US.
Dallas Stars are streaming all their games for free, cause they don't know if they're going to have a channel to be on.
In Canada it's a non issue at the moment. Every teams games are televised in some way on TV in their own market.
But I wouldn't be surprised if it goes the subscription route in the near future.
@@judistzoinkiski3395The black out areas are part of the licensing negotiations. And guess what? NHL has control over how they decide to license their own product.
Wait a minute, that's crazy technology you're talking here! What year do you think we are? 2006? That's so far in the future!!
Woohoo!! I'm part of the 1.4% from the UK and the 4.9% female. I feel special if rather lonely. As someone who came to hockey later in life, I think the game is really fun and entertaining: I described to my friends as football (soccer) speeded up without the boring bits and with a lot more violence. So highly marketable to new fans ;-).
For us fans in the Europe, a plea to the NHL to have more matinee games on weekends to give us a chance to watch some games live: we would definitely pay for the privilege. And getting a global series game in the UK would be AMAZING - I would pretty much do everything I could to attend, even if they were teams I hated.
@@carolinedoan6150 who do you support in the EIHL?
Me to. Go Red Wings. Go Devils (Cardiff)
Can I fancy you some French fries? 🍟
I am an 81 year old female from Seattle and the kraken and I love hockey also
The NBA, MLS & NHL needs to take notes that there might be interest in their games (maybe besides the MLS) here in the UK due to how americanised their culture as become over the years.
Brother I’m British, hockey is massive over here. It’s about time North Americans started to realise that! A global series over here would easily fill the 02 area in London, or the Nottingham ice centre (best and only dual-rinked arena in UK)! The amount of fans would literally balloon for the NHL, especially considering we’re a English speaking country so that cuts out the language barrier issue you could have with other countries around the world
Amazing!
I’m hoping that the league returns to the UK someday. Perhaps maybe some games at EIHL arenas outside London would be nice as well. Maybe my team the LA Kings will be sent again.
Gary hates the IIHF so it's not gonna happen. that's why the IIHF can get 10 countries in a tournament but the NHL only got 4
@@gbalph4 yeah I’d like to see that too, I’m from Nottingham so I’d love to see us and maybe Sheffield host the series. That’d be unreal
@@chrisbelos2834you’re spot on mate, it’s such a shame he’s as close minded to these things as he is
How about a proper legitimate streaming service for ALL nhl games?
Google and vpn problem solved, other league still have blackouts on their "all team games"
@@judistzoinkiski3395 well yeah buuuuuuuutttt
@@judistzoinkiski3395I hear the rationale of “just using a vpn” a lot on that subject. Thing is, most people just don’t use them. The average Joe isn’t gonna know about them, much less how to use them, or that they’re applicable to NHL games. It’s a band aid that only a small percent of people are even aware of
I don’t know if I’m the only one from South America but hi from Argentina
As one of the 4.9% female and 40% from the USA (and one of the paid subscribers), I have to say I love your channel. I found it during the 2022 playoffs and have been a devotee ever since. You provide such insightful commentary. And how could I hate a fellow fan of my favorite team Dallas?
We need a global series in the UK.. ice hockey is massive here and games would sell out in no time..
Toronto and the New York Rangers in London is being discussed, with the O2 Arena pegged for it. Those two teams did face each other in London before, back in the 90s, with them being preseason games, and another matchup was thought of in the early 2000s, when Toronto had Steve Thomas with them. A regular season game in London with those two teams would most definitely be a draw.
Brother it’s just called hockey when played on ice, other than that it’s ball hockey, field hockey, or whatever
@@Mitch-ui8ps it’s not that deep is it, you guys call our sport soccer so swings and roundabouts and all that
@@lb_75 only if you’re in Canada or America just call it “hockey” especially Canada haha
I grew up in a Mexican household with absolutely no hockey tradition. I really wasn’t even into sports at all growing up. I didn’t even know what hockey was until I was in my 20’s when I felt I needed another hobby. Just randomly, I happened to find footage from Fight Night at The Joe and I was instantly hooked. My passion for it grew and grew until I brought all of my friends and family to games. I’m so happy the NHL is reaching out to the latino community because it’s ignited a passion in me that’s given me so much purpose and direction. This sport shouldn’t be as niche as it is. I hope this campaign in Mexico brings lots and lots more viewers for the league and hockey in general. Hockey is so beautiful.
Great point! The Florida Panthers have made some decent inroads with the Latin community down here. Winning helps too 😉
Many of those views from México are my own. I am a Canadian who has been living down here for 3 decades.
So you’re that guy?🤓
PWHL has a Japanese player who came over - not speaking English or French. Game is growing there!
If you're talking about Akane Shiga, I believe she just recently signed in Europe. But I agree I think Japan could be a good place to grow the game, especially with their women's team ranked in the top 10.
I have been living in Japan for the last 10 years in the Osaka area, I 've played here a lot, and I don't feel the game is really growing unfortunately.
Although that might be just my beer league bubble. We've got a reduction of the number of teams in the area
My local ECHL team just signed a player from the Japanese national team. A player (I believe on the second line) from another team I saw them play was also from Japan. It's growing
I love how you mention watching highlights for football as i had to watch hockey highlights for the NHL years ago as accessing viewership for games was too difficult! And of course the fact the average game starts at midnight for me (im from Scotland)
I'm part of the 1.4% of the UK and fully agree they could get so many more fans here. I had to travel to Sweden last winter to just catch a game and the crowd was full of so many others who'd done the same
@@jackkbensonn who do you follow in the EIHL brother?
100% - you put some of that NHL money and marketing prowess behind the EIHL and you easily reach a load of new fans in the UK imo. Get some games shown on the telly instead the abysmal current setup and I could really see the sport as a whole becoming even more popular here.
Vegas social media posted a skater waiving a Mexican flag this morning. That was very moving as a proponent of the community here in Vegas.
American Female viewer, lifetime hockey fan, longtime channel lover! ❤ I give absolutely zero rips about women’s hockey lol. I’m always amused when people equate interest in women’s sports with female fan base. I want to watch men play, full stop. I love a fast-moving, full-contact game… which is why I also like American Football. I’m from a Swedish-American family, Grew up surrounded by hockey - RJ practically narrated my childhood via the Sabres lol - I went to a private highschool… we had (have) a private rink with ice down all year, we billeted young players of multiple nationalities… and I had poorer friends too who somehow always managed to figure out how to cobble together gear in order to play. On the flip side my husband grew up in the SW desert, knew absolutely Jack about hockey when he moved up here, and now as a fan he wishes he’d gotten introduced to it young because he probably would have loved to play it (instead he was a national champion offensive lineman 👌🏻)
As for expansion, I have nothing against it on principle… but growth just for the sake of growth is not necessarily a good thing. There’s plenty of growth to be done in the existing markets. And expanding while ignoring your existing customers’ wants and interests is like running the tap while keeping the drain open as far as a business model.
As always appreciate your nuanced discussion THG! Your content remains the best on TH-cam after all these years, thanks for your consistency and high quality content
Edited for grammar lol
One of the interesting things about a lot of PWHL fans (and a lot of women's team pro sports in general) is that they found that many of them were previously not fans of pro sports in general. I do think for young girls (or for parents of those girls) there's a correlation as well but just like Canadians and USports football it's not a guarantee that just because you're a Canadian who likes watching US college football you're going to tune into McMaster vs. Carleton lol
@@kiroolioneaver8532 I’m hesitant to trust surveys too deeply (I assume that’s how they collected this data?) given the heavy bias inherent in them. I’ve certainly never been polled nor has anyone I know and I’ve been in/around sports for almost 40 years. Ultimately I’m happy to have people attracted to the sport, I just don’t want to see the the heart of the sport *change* just to capture different audiences, and misconceived notions about what does actually attract a specific audience can drive that sort of thing. 🤷🏼♀️
What id give to watch an NHL game here in the UK, it would be amazing!
I'm also here and waiting in the UK Gary. The Hockey Guy has spoken and you know it makes sense!!
As you may guess from my avatar here i'm a hockey fan from the UK lol... part of the 1.4% :) I love your show and watch as much as I can, likewise with the NHL itself I watch a fair bit, however i'm not sure if your aware but here in Britain its not that easy to watch it. For many years now its been on pay-per-view TV channels with a different name every few years, i'm not sure which channel it is on this year as I now stream games online instead but way back in the 90's and early 2000's one or two games per week were shown, with I believe all of the Stanley Cup Final games on one of our "terrestrial" TV channels, (we had five of these, BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, with the latter showing NHL games with our own canadian ex-pat pundits). So the NHL isn't easy to watch in the UK sadly and hasn't been for some time... we do have Ice Hockey in Britain but its not in a great condition, there are actually two governing bodies, the Elite Ice Hockey League (EIHL) which is run by the ten owners of the ten teams within that league, they have mostly imports from abroad playing on their teams but the best British players too. The EIHL is a completely seperate entity to the English Ice Hockey Association (EIHA) which runs the rest of the teams in England (Scotland has its own Associated too). The EIHA is even split further into a Premier League made up of the more affluent teams which include a good smattering of imports and very good British players. Next in the Tiers of British Hockey are the National Ice Hockey Leagues (NIHL) which again is split, both by a North and South divide and also into Division One and Division Two, D1 teams have a couple of imports (one or two, but a lot of times none) and good local talent plays on their local teams, its semi-professional (as a lot of Premier League players are too) and some even pay-to-play in D1, next is the D2 where virtually no imports play and most players pay-to-play... however some of the best games of hockey I have ever seen have been D1 games so the standard is actually pretty good. Ice Hockey is THE most popular indoor sport in Britain, we have Basketball Leagues, Snooker, Darts, Indoor Bowling and Ice Hockey is the best attended and yet probably 90% of the people on the street wouldn't know it exists as a sport let alone its popularity in Britain... the EIHA and EIHL don't get on with one another, neither is run very well and despite being the most popular indoor sport for years its only been on Pay-per-View channels and this season isn't on any kind of TV at all, its live stream pay-per-view only. Ice Hockey used to be a lot bigger, in fact where I am from near Durham in County Durham, we used to have a team, the Durham Wasps... despite the squad being bought and moved and the rink closing in the mid 90's the Durham Wasps still have more facebook fans than some British Elite League teams... about 10-12 years ago a game was played between ex-players of the Durham Wasps and their local rivals Whitley Warriors... Whitley's Hillhead Arena can hold over 3000 people, not only was it packed but hundreds had to be turned away at the doors... and that was maye 20 years after the last game played at Durham. In certain parts the interest in Hockey is there, but for the most part in Britain IF a person knows it is a sport they are tell you "oh Ice Hockey, thats where you go to watch a fight and hope a game breaks out".
I really want them to come to London, I am ab oilers fan but I don't care which team comes over I'm going to see them
As a Mexican, the best way i believe to grow the came in Mexico is to promote teams where cities has more Mexicans/Hispanic communities, like Chicago, Los Angeles, San Jose, Miami and promoting Hispanic players now in the NHL like Auston Matthews
Alex Martinez ❤
Lots of people are unaware that Auston Matthews mum is from Mexico; the Robertson brothers and Matt Dumba are of Filipino heritage, etc. The NHL does such a poor job marketing their players to draw in new and casual fans particularly in non-traditional markets
@@kiroolioneaver8532 True, that's what ticks me of about the league
@@kiroolioneaver8532 Why is it the NHL's fault? People are going to be dedicated to sports that are a natural part of their geographic culture.
@@FischerFan Because they limit their opportunities for growth because they don't effectively market their individual players (particularly their personalities/backgrounds). The NHL is actually the most popular sport's league in the world with the most prominent/high profile people of Filipino descent. That's a huge untapped market of potential fans (both in Canada, the US, and overseas) but again many in those communities don't even know that those dudes (the Robertsons, Dumba) are of Filipino origin. If the NHL better highlighted that fact that's more people you can attract to be fans of the game. The NBA, MLB, and even NFL (which has players wear the flags of their country of background on their helmet) are leagues that understand this.
proud female THG viewer here :D i got into hockey from my friend last season, but your videos have been a god send for learning the game and many players! also have been keeping up with the pwhl, very excited for the team names to be released tomorrow. go stars!!
Im one of the 1.4% of your UK viewership and you are 1000% correct about the UK being a market the NHL can real hit, everyone I introduce to the sport loves it, theres a lot of synergy with Football (soccer) and that goes a long way to converting UK fans to hockey
there's definitely some similarities between hockey and football, both games piss us off with minute offside decisions so there is that
Woohoo being part of 4.9% of your audience. Love your channel. Likely with the introduction of the PWHL (also a huge fan so far) more women will be drawn in.
Wish we’d get a team back in hartford as difficult as that would be.
Greetings from Italy! Nhl is already going global without even really trying to reach out. Let's go sharks!
They could have promoted their star player in Pyeongchang 2018. The NHL would have had great exposure in South Korea thanks to the Olympics.
Big fan of hockey and the NHL here in England since being exposed to it working on American bases in the 80s . Saw pre season games at Wembley with the Blackhawks and leaf's. We then got a couple of games a week on free TV Then more on general sports channels on satellite. But after the 2005 lock out we lost free TV reason claimed was a massive increase in fee's and on satellite/cable the games moved to another fringe channel with poor coverage and they refuse to show the original intermission shows for some reason Just highlights of other games and adds. Great channel Shannon watch it daily
Yeah premier sports f us with the intermission stuff, during the SCF it was killing me that I wasn’t able to listen to the intermission reports and was just stuck watching the steelers win the play offs over and over again
I’m one of the 5% - it’s always interesting to me when I see lower percentages of female fans, because so many of the hockey fans I know are also female.
I think more than having exhibitions and international games, the NHL needs to enable potential fans to stumble upon a game. That’s basically how I got into the sport in 1993. No one in my family was into the sport at all, I just happened to accidentally see a rare game on I think ABC. Nowadays, it usually takes an effort to watch
There is a new hockey manga called Dogsred written by Satoru Noda, author of the successful Golden Kamuy series. I think it would be cool for the NHL to do some sort of cross promotion with the series to grow the game in Japan.
I'll check it out. Is it the only hockey Manga cause I've never heard of one?
The main problem with most countries is that they don't have a proper winter, hence no natural incentive to put on a pair of skates. Hockey arenas that can sustain ice all year long cost a LOT of money, so there needs to be high participation fees. Football (European) and many other sports are super cheap to start, can be played almost anywhere and are safer, so I think hockey will remain a niche sport in which there are 7-8 countries that seriously compete and the rest will retain their semi-pro or amateur status.
Regarding Italy, their new head coach is Jukka Jalonen, the most successful Finnish head coach ever.
Exactly. Too many people on this discussion are ignoring the factors of climate reality and consumer demand.
Both you and Shannon have mentioned the factor of the cost of hockey and that is why even Canada now has more kids registered in soccer than in hockey.
Yes, hockey will never go beyond the status of niche sport in some counties, including those in temperate parts of the world.
People who think hockey should succeed in the tropics should remember the reasons why counties like Mexico, Colombia, and DPR Congo are not known for downhill skiing, either.
As an Aussie, Australian NHL pages saw huge boosts of people joining off the back of last years game. I was so sad it wasn't the B's 😢 But I think with the right marketing you could easily make a team work in Mexico.
I'm from Portugal and I love hockey. I'm starting to pay attention to European leagues/Champions League. ( the UK, Sweden and a bit of the KHL). Unfortenately I do not know many portuguese hockey fans, we do have the best if not one of the best roller hockey teams in the world but not the same as ice hockey for me.
Hopefully NHL can grow more in Europe and maybe adjust it's schedules for europeans to watch more live games.
I’m an Australian viewer, honestly thought we’d make up a noticeable percentage. Might sound strange but the big 4 sports in North America and major football leagues in Europe are really big here
I’ve always been puzzled that not a single team in the states carry a Spanish broadcast regularly. Real untapped market.
I am in a super minority of your channel fans - female and from Australia. Does that make me a unicorn?
There's a lot of fascinating stuff in the UK... And the fact the Team GB goal song is "One Step Beyond" by Madness is absolutely outstanding.
Your channel came across,my TH-cam right before the start of the Kraken starting there first season and I watch you very regularly because you are not intimidating or condescending while I vastly Improved my very beginner knowledge . I would love to somehow be able to ask you about something that just happened on the ice but that would be too boring for the long time long time hockey fans. Please keep up the awesome work you,do!!
The FOOTBALL show he’s on about is Match of the day for anyone wondering. The longest running weekly show in European TV!
I didn't understand the global stuff until I watched Tom Grassi do his series visiting the places the NFL has played and will play this season outside the US. I get it now. Totally on board with NHL playing games outside of North America.
They key for getting hockey to work in non-traditional markets is probably the same as traditional ... sheets of ice. The differance is some parts of the world freeze for a part of the year, and the non-traditional markets don't.
If the NHL undersatnds, "we can put a team pratically anywhere, but the key is putting down sheets of ice for youth hockey" they can win long term.
It has to be economical for a community to build an ice rink in the first place, the same way there is no point in constructing a curling club with dedicated sheets of ice if the demand for the product isn't there and never will be.
"never will be" .... your crystal ball might be broken
Yeah! I belong to the one percenters on THG!!!
I LOVE IT!!! The THG Channel is on my screen daily. :)
Greetings from Erfurt, Germany. :)
The NHL should have a world cup, and it should be 16 teams.
And the NHL needs to host the first one in Europe. The lure of toronto or calgary/Edmonton and those ticket prices are hard to pass up, but growing the game means putting every second one in Europe
The growth opportunities are Britain, France, Germany and even italy
I would hope the NHL takes smaller, more internal steps towards improving their product and making it more accessible before they make big moves like adding more teams. You gotta wonder how easily people in Mexico can even watch games.
I really do enjoy your channel- but I do think that I am perhaps not alone in having to take a pause on certain sports as a female hockey fan with hockey due to how sport leagues treat my community (lgbt+ & female). I grew up highly involved in national level sports (swimming), so I do have some passing experience with sports, but the stories coming out of the Blackhawks Org. and the Canadian Hockey JR Worlds team was just difficult to deal with.
It isn’t that you don’t cover the incidents with great respect- you always did, but that hockey as an entity or these larger organizations seemed so eager for nil sanctions and coverups. It’s hard to celebrate a game that I really enjoyed when my mind couldn’t get past it.
Being both a NASCAR and hockey fan in NC I loved it when they had Ryan there after he won his cup championship. But I do understand your reference
I'm probably like a unicorn among your viewers - female viewer from Poland :D🦄
I think this a very interesting topic, but I have slightly different view on some of your points.
I started watching NHL sometime at the beginning of 2022/2023 season entirely by chance.
I work for a global company that has headquarters located in Minnessota and one day on the intranet there was an article about how one of our employees is a translator for Kirill Kaprizov. Like... what?!
It sounded so bizzarre, that I started searching for more and more information about the player and the Wild, then came across game highlights on YT and eventually your channel. I have heard about NHL before (there was even one Polish player in the NHL - Mariusz Czerkawski), but I didn't pay any attention to it tbh.
NBA has a quite a following in PL. It is probably because one of the TV channels has been showing games since many many years (since 90s for sure), so there was enough time for fanbase to grow (my husband is a fan since childhood as well). And one separate reason is Michael Jordan.
NFL is a different story. The fanbase has been growing steadily, but they have this one event that brings people in front of TV. Even if you are not a NFL fan you'll watch Super Bowl. Even in Poland :D
But NHL? Sure we've heard about Gretzky, but he is not nearly as recognized here as Jordan. Not for the ordinary people on the street. Poles don't recognize NHL teams, definately don't recognize current stars like McDavid, MacKinnon or Kutcherov. They might have heard about Crosby, Ovechkin or Jagr, but that's probably it.
So what makes me, female viewer from Poland interested in NHL? Best players in the world.
Their skills, but also their personalities. It doesn't mean that the game itself is not interesting. It means that I need to find this connection, create an attachment that will keep me wanting to come back and watch the game. I need to get to know "the characters" at least a little bit to be interested in "the story".
As a new fan I don't have a historic connection to specific franchise, I create it via players.
Great example of that is F1 and Drive to Survive. Even in Europe (original & still primary market for F1) this series brought back so many viewers that used to watch F1 and also great number of new fans. At firts they don't focus on technicalities of the sport. They focus on personalities, on "heros" and "villains". NHL needs that. Sure, we know DtS is drama-driven and fake a lot of times, but it did it's job. It started a 'fire', an interest, a need to stay with the sport to know who will eventually win. I know few people who started watching F1 because of DtS, stopped watching the show, but are still extremely engaged in F1. It starts with the interest about the personalities and stories, then the sport itself and then the technicalities.
Let's be honest, on TV sports look more impressive. No matter if it is volleyball, football, american football, F1 or hockey the game is faster, more energetic, dramatic. It's a show. The players are suppose to look unreal, their skills out of this world.
This does not help in creating fans of the sport who actually play it. Live sports help create those (where the game is slower, still entertaining, but the level looks reachable).
It's awesome to see Global Series events in Europe, clinics in Mexico and I hope there will be more and more of those. But do you think that new fans of the NHL will be created by them? People who don't follow the sport probably won't know about the events and, secondly, those games are pricey as hell (at least in Europe), so not everyone will be tempted to spend money on something they might not enjoy.
Question is - does the league want more NHL "engaged viewer" type of fans or "playing the game" fans?
After I started following the NHL (which I can very rarely do live, as there are only few games once a week that are on a 'normal' hour in Europe and that's something that NHL should think about if they want to expand viewership here) together with my husband we decided to go for the first time to US for holidays. We have set up our stay in Miami in such a way to be able to experience one NHL and one NBA game.
I knew nearly nothing about Florida Panthers (I recognized 2 players: Barkov and Tkachuk) and even less about the VGK, their oponents that night. Still, I enjoyed that game much much more than NBA. I felt safe in the arena, the atmosphere, the show, the cheering it was amazing! But would I be there if I wasn't at least a smallest bit an NHL fan already? I don't think so.
Especially with the ticket prices that are on other arenas.
Thank you THG for your videos which help me develop as an beginner NHL fan and also kept me sane when I was 100% sleep deprived when my daughter was born :D
I'm one of the 1.4 %, nhl is totally behind a paywall now, it's too expensive over here after you factor in what we pay for everything else
love all you do for the game. you're incredible!
As a UK hockey can it can feel like the NHL is uninterested in growing the sport here. Last time the NHL came here was 2007. I have no idea why the UK is overlooked as a potential market. NFL and NBA have been very successful in the last 10-15 years. I know the sport would grow if it had more exposure.
No support for Wrexham AFC? Our boy Ryan's from your neck of the woods and you gotta cheer your own! ;-)>
Viewing and liking every video from The Netherlands :)
I saw today that the Montreal Canadians were playing in the NFL today, a really weird way to increase awareness though.
Canadians, or Canadiens?
@@dennish.7708 Both
I never understood gatekeeping, Especially in Hockey. Literally only good things can come to the game as a result of more people being interested. More players, more teams better Olympics etc. This and the league being terrible at marketing itself and it's players is why the sport is having so much trouble expanding compared to every other big league. Equipment being expensive doesn't help either.
The challenge is that most games start in the middle of the night in Eu
I am a Canadian born in Scotland and living again in Scotland. I watched your channel from behind the great firewall since 2019 (I lived in China for 14 years). I agree that the market here is under-served. Here in Aberdeen, the Lynx, a local team, sells out regularly and I watched both the Dundee Rockets (in the 80s when Garry Unger was the coach) and have watched a Dundee Stars game or two as well. As for the NHL, start times are awful for western games, but that's to be expected. When I lived in China, HNIC became HDIC (Hockey Night in Canada to Hockey Day in China) for Saturday games that I could comfortably watch on Sunday mornings.
Whatever contacts you eventually use to get your daughter on the zamboni at the Kings game can likely also get you in contact with Will Ferrell!
Your contacts with the Ducks might be able to forward you their Kings' counterparts as well.
2089 views from Italy, probably over 90% form South Tyrol :D
less than 10% here. Anyway over two thousand is a surprise for me. I thought I was the only Italian here 😄
Feel so proud to be part of the 1.4% 👍
As a viewer living in a non-mentioned country, I'm very happy to be one of the few people living in Japan watching your videos. And I know personally half a dozens others who watch you. (Yes, we're all Canadians)
Maybe if you learned Japanese that could help!😂
Im so bummed that game isn’t happening in France now. I’ll be over there in the spring and I would have loved to go see the Habs while there
I’m unhealthily obsessed with both Hockey and NASCAR and when they crossover, I love it! I love it when the Spire Motorsports cars run Greenville Swamp Rabbits paint schemes!
As a hockey fan in Ireland, a massive issue with the NHL is the time difference and the time that they air the games. i understand that people have jobs and there is a very good reason to have games on around 7pm. It just means that the European hockey fans have to stay up until 3am to watch a full hockey game. If the NHL had a lot more games at 4pm on the weekend, it would help with European viewership.
When I was a sophomore in high school we played against a team from Japan that was tour around the states battling it out with American teams. We are in Iowa and they kept up and played great
To THG's point about expanding to new markets to grow the game. My fiancee and I live in Charlotte and had never thought about hockey until a friend of ours took us to a Checkers game. We fell in love with the game instantly and have watched every Hurricanes game since. It makes me wonder how many people out there would come to enjoy the game if simply given the opportunity to go to a game.
NHL needs to start having more afternoon games and selling those games to international TV stations. The only way to get people hooked on the product is to give them the product. I get that afternoon games are not preferred by North-American fans, but those are the only games that can ever be shown internationally with any hopes of having an audience. I'm Finnish, and for me, Eastern games usually start at 2 AM, and Western games somewhere around 4-5 AM, whereas afternoon games can start as early as 7-8 PM. Just have those early games regularly, give broadcasting rights to numerous different countries in EU, and I guarantee you you'll grow an international audience (larger than what it currently is).
I get that it's not optimal for North-American fans, but North-American fans have it so incredibly easy already that they have no room to complain. You don't have to stay up nights every single day just to watch hockey. I do. Every single European NHL fan has to. And we'd love to see the league grow here too, but it's not going to happen unless you make games available to casual fans, instead of just the die-hards who don't mind ruining their sleep schedules over hockey.
Celebrity appearances: "Hello Kodak Black!"
I love your channel buddy, cheers from brazil!!
I think another big issue that the NHL faces is also “following stars”. Think about every other pro sports draft. NFL, NBA, and MLB all drafted players after they’ve been in college for 4+ years and they’re already household names before they’ve even signed a contract and you’ll see a lot of them that next season. Meanwhile the majority of NHL players are drafted before college so all they do is take a photo in their jersey, go to rookie camp, then not be heard from again until 3-4 years later. It’s not conducive to building excitement for new players because we don’t even know their names until the draft and won’t hear about them again for months at a time.
Currently, the biggest problem for all NHL/hockey fans all around the world is to be able to even watch games they want... All the shenanigans necessary to watch games from different countries won't create any new fans... For us, who grew up with hockey it's okay to find ways to watch it, there is too many people who don't know anything about hockey, but it exists... We need a servise so we can watch games anytime anywhere... even better with all the statistics and custom highlights... it's 2024 (almost 25) omg... NHL's technology is like 2000....
Speaking on some of the players being real good people, Alex Tuch is an excellent example in our community. His AT9 foundation that he started and the toy drives he does are just examples.
There is plenty of players that do this stuff and it's very uplifting to have them be pillars in their communities.
I was at the 2 games in Melbourne almost a year ago and the atmosphere was electric. Aussies love physical sports and I think the two sellouts for LA v Arizona shows there is a hunger to get the game in the Southern Hemisphere. I realise the issue is the long travel between North America and Aus
Expanding into northern Mexico near Culican doesn't seem too far fetched. It would definitly take a while but we saw how great first movers advantage was in Vegas.
I love to see Australia there , i am originally from Slovakia but moved here to Sydney , Australia 7 years ago and recently started playing ice hockey again , I can say that for Sydney City we have I think 4 rinks that I can think of ? Which is ridiculous but at the same time it obviously makes sense due to weather conditions..... and for comparison around 5mil people .... and 4 rinks ...
At the rink that I play at we have 3-5 different beer league levels with different owners / admins 4-8 teams per league and avg lets say 15 people per team - so it all adds up ! There is heaps of Womens Hockey teams as well / mixed teams + other sanctioned competitions , ice skating etc. , but unfortunately there are way bigger sports such as NRL and AFL that all the Aussies love ( which again ) makes sense due to weather etc.
I genuinely believe if they build bit more rinks it would help with development and growth of the sport - but its all about money , I would assume its not very cheap to build and maintain ice rink in Australia with our weather conditions lol.
Anyway , much love keep the vids up .
I’m Hispanic, so I hope the NHL can grow the game in the Hispanic demographic. Hockey is a very underrated sport in the demographic, even though it’s very easy to get attached to once you get into it.
Speaking of WWE and NHL, this past Friday night SmackDown they were in Edmonton and Corey Perry was in the front row, was mentioned on commentary and also got involved. They also showed the Edmonton Oilers championship belt. It was being held by an Aussie but was taken by Kevin Owens (Canadian)
I wish they would just split A-Town Down Under. The breakup is taking too long. I thought Perry being the face was an odd choice, in Edmonton or not. We know he is a natural heel. :)
The NHL could have a basic streaming service. It would show series from a few years back. Plus have interviews of the current stars. They should also introduce programs for the kids to start learning the game
The biggest problem the NHL has with the UK is simply the time difference in my opinion. Games just end up way too late in the night here - which is a shame because without that I imagine it would be huge over this side of the pond. NFL has an advantage there due to having more reasonable game times. The NHL would do well to introduce weekly Sunday afternoon games in North America - have a Frozen Frenzy on a British streaming service and I think before time you’d see it become very popular over here.
There are quite a few games on Sunday afternoons - AFTER the NFL season is over in early/mid-February.
@@TracyJean1972 yeah there’s a few, the North American holidays we get like four early ones as well, the problem I guess is the NFL because the NHL won’t compete against it in North America, I just wonder if they did something very brave and had Sunday lunchtime games (12pm for you, 5pm here) every weekend of the season (within reason) with as many teams as possible playing that time slot if they wouldn’t then create a regular spot for the Brits to plug into the product. In a Match of the Day style for football we could have a weekly catch-up show leading into the live games then and it would generate a lot of interest. People won’t get invested without it being regular I don’t feel sadly
@@FM-ex9cr It would make sense, which means the NHL wouldn’t do it. Lol
@@TracyJean1972 haha I get that impression mate 😂 it’s a shame because there’s actually a lot of negativity around the Premier League over here so people are looking elsewhere when it comes to sport. The things which football is struggling with other here are things which hockey has right. The time is literally now if they wanted to make a strong play to grab a stronger European audience in general
Cost will always be an issue with hockey. Around me the biggest sports growing up were always football (both kinds) and basketball. Baseball and hockey just required more equipment to start. The others just required a ball and the right space, and there was always a park close by that could work
A Global Series game in Mexico City would work for a couple of reasons. One is that all of the other sports leagues in North America have done at least one game there in the past decade & each game has been well attended. Heck even NASCAR is going to Mexico City next year. The other reason why it would work is because of the outreach being done by Dallas, LA & Vegas with the learn to play clinics because by learning the game, fans especially younger ones will be more eager to attend a game involving their team & play the sport even if its ball or street hockey which is a good way to improvise given how expensive ice hockey is.
Speaking of global outreach, hello from Czechia! I've been into NA hockey since 2008-ish and a Wild fan since 2011/12.
Mexico City is intriguing, I think it could be a great destination for Houston's AHL affiliate in case NHL goes to Houston
Lifelong NASCAR fan here: even I get tired of them. This just reminded me an ownship group former NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick is the owner group of some hockey team (it might be the Charlotte Checkers).
Wings moving East probably added 2 years to my life… 🇬🇧
"Growing the game" is nearly always code for "make the owners more money." The focus should be on the product which will sell itself (as it has for years)
If the product sells itself, then you'll have to ask yourself why is the NHL fourth among North America's big four leagues? And so what if the owners make more money? It's not like there's an inverse correlation between popularity of a sport and ownership value (look at the Premier League owners lol).
Fans will make anything sound easy and correct...
Idk about that man, I am from the Charlotte area of North Carolina, and there are still a lot of people who know more about the Checkers AHL team than they are even aware that an NHL team is in Raleigh. Part of the issue is also blackout zones, nobody is driving 3 hours to Raleigh to see every Hurricanes game.
@@FalloutUrMum fucking yikes! The league's gotta do something about their internal coverage before trying to grow the game abroad then
@@neeltheother2342 There are many reasons why nhl is 4th. Some are intrinsic to the sport of hockey and some are not. I'm confident you can figure them out yourself and discern which is which.
Owners can make all the money they want but the league should always focus on the quality of the sport they present.
I'm glad you brought up soccer - why is that the biggest sport in the world? Why are impoverished 3rd world towns who've never heard of "growing the game" huge fans of European clubs?
Also, did the NFL's decision to put a game in brazil come out of a desire to grow the game or mere greed?
As you say, fans can make anything sound easy and correct
@@shawklan27 yeah, there's no reason why the Hornets and Panthers should be more popular than the Hurricanes. The Hurricanes are actually a good team that makes playoffs consistently for years now. Panthers and Hornets are trash, tho their colors and merch are fantastic. There should be no part of the Carolinas where people are unaware of their existence.
It's purely the NHLs rules kneecaping the team from growing in their market. There are 15 million people in the Carolinas, they can easily be one of the most profitable teams in the NHL. Like, the Charlotte checkers first game back in the 50s drew a crowd of 40,000 people. People like Hockey here, they just support local minor league teams
It was a magazine type show here in the UK that got me into hockey c.2000 - league round up then last 2 periods if whichever game fitted the time slot. It didn’t seem to last for very long. They still do it for NFL - sucks they don’t do it for hockey.
I swear sometimes it feels like I've done a better job marketing the NHL to my friends than the actual NHL has marketed itself to the world
As a follower from the uk i don't understand why the nhl isn't the most popular north american sport in the rest of the world.As a soccer fan it's the easiest to get into as i get the scoring,offsides etc as it's similar to soccer.The nfl,mlb which i follow as well took me a while to understand what was going on.The nhl should be targeting soccer fans as we'll get the game easy.
The main complaint is that it's too fast, they can't follow the puck
You should do a ice hockey meet up in Seattle just a stick n puck session don’t need full gear
My guess is that half of the regulation sized rinks in the US are here in Minnesota, lol. Jeez there are so many rinks here.
Suprised NHL had no games in the UK.Just look at Sheffield beating Swedish Lakers in the CLH
One of the issues Hockey has is a similar problem Baseball and American Football have that is the popularity of somewhat similar sport Baseball has 500 million fans worldwide but cricket has 2 and a half Billion American Football has 450 million fans worldwide but other full contact Football sports (rugby ,Australian Football, etc.) have 700 million Field hockey has 2 billion fans worldwide . Basketball does not have this problem.
The game can thrive in the UK. I mean, there are British hockey youtubers that cover the NHL. They don't have the numbers THG has, but they exist and its interesting to see how they view the game.
still early in watching the video, but the immediate thing that comes to mind about a team in Mexico City (aside from obvious stuff like language, currency difference, cultural difference, etc) is the altitude. Denver makes a big deal over being a mile high (~5300 ft above sea level), well it turns out Mexico City's altitude is 7,350 ft.
Yeah, growing the game beyond the current markets is not gonna happen. The game's too expensive, inaccessible, too conservative, and insular. Heck, just look at a bunch of the comments not wanting to grow the game and just serve the NA market.
( FIFA ) Football & Basketball are the future
Behind that , Volleyball
I personally would like to see *FUTSAL* grow , its World Cup is just coming up.
For me it does everything better than Ice Hockey tbh.
I'm glad you brought up Mexico City. I think the Kings and Knights (maybe Dallas and another team) can make it happen. I know I do my part to grow the game by trying to get my family in Mexico into it. The NHL needs to make it easier for the fan base there to watch though.
what i'd do for the league to do more matinee games... i seriously can't deal with games at 1am with uni starting back up
"Put a team in Quebec City." Shannon "Focus"
Im sorry sir but im probably responsible for the 2000 views in mexico. Idk why i watch you every night to go to sleep and traveled for a year in mexico..... So yeah my bad
"You are not looking at Mexico City as a future expansion city"
"Don't challenge Gary Bettman" - Anyone who wants the Nordiques back and hates Southern hockey teams
I actually think Mexico is not that weird of an idea. The pool of people is huge and it's not that further when you compare it to Québec.
@sebastiencarrieres8825 if it did work out, the NHL could pull ahead in North American sports and by saying they're a three country league.
Imagine if (IF) a Mexico City team won a cup before a Canadian team
@@PenguinNote67 Bettman would be so proud!
Female viewer from Australia :)
Im a nhl and nascar fan. The only time i see hockey related stuff on a nascar, is spire, who owns a couple echl teams. Even wwe wrestlers appear at nascar and give the command or drive in the pace car.
I would rather see interest in hockey promoted in the US and Canada rather than oversees, tbh. Some of the places you mentioned, sure they'll get fans, but will there ever be any players big enough from some of those places to even play in the NHL? Soccer, a sport I can't stand, is popular worldwide because the players are small. I think it's a case of the grass is always greener sometimes. Let's stick to getting the sport better televised at home. :)