Does the NHL Possibly Want People to Watch Hockey?

By gum, I think the NHL has started to realize that increasing the reach of your product and getting people engaged in it is the best way to attract and retain fans. The concept had completely escaped them for quite some time and it appears they could - and I stress "could" - be coming around.

NHL Expands Television Reach to Asia

In surprise news - at least to me - the NHL is set to announce a multi-year deal to distribute NHL games throughout a large portion of Asia, including India and China.

In one fell swoop the NHL has expanded the television reach of their product from 5% to 40% of the world. Those numbers are based on my rudimentary knowledge of world population, not data I got from an official source so don't quote me on it.

No matter how you slice it, a 700% increase in your viewership reach is cause to celebrate. If just 0.1% of those new potential viewers are fans, that's 2.5 million more eyes watching the true "beautiful game".

Centre Ice Online Expands to Europe

It was just a couple weeks back that I was reflecting on my "Why doesn't the NHL Want People to Watch Hockey?" post. A post which still gets traffic from people searching for solutions to their troubles with Centre Ice Online.

The reason being that I had started a post in a similar vein which was focused on why the NHL will send players halfway across the globe to kick off the season in Europe, yet won't alloww access to their Centre Ice Online offering to people outside of North America.

However, it turns out that Europeans are now able to subscribe to the service. I'm not sure why the question includes the Middle East but makes no mention of whether folks in the Middle East can subscribe or not. Maybe they think Europe is the Middle East??

NHL Offline

I've also both applauded and bemoaned the NHL's online content offerings. The technology was very rudimentary and the look was very pre-2000 era. They didn't even roll out a real-time game tracker system until mid-last season!

Their YouTube highlights deal is laughable and the speed and completeness of the updates to their NHL.tv section has been spotty and suspect.

The stats pages are well-done - except for the absence of shirt charts - but having them auto-refresh during the game doesn't count as "live updating" in my book.

Overall, I would give them a C- on what they've offered to fans.

TSN Fills the Gap
TSN got on the ball and rolled out a live scoreboard feature* towards the end of last season. It was...ok.

But should networks be relied on to the fill the gap for the league? Not in my mind.

Stats, Stories and Recaps...Oh My!

And it appears some folks over at the NHL head offices have decided that they've had enough as well.

Not only are they set to launch a new version of NHL.com, but they will be rolling out the much anticipated NHL Game Center feature.

The feature rebrands NHL Centre Ice Online as Game Center Live and will also provides free real-time stats, a play-by-play game tracker known as "Ice Tracker". It will also include in-game highlights, live chat and radio broadcasts.

On the surface, it doesn't sound too different from the existing Scores section of their website. However if you watch the video on what will be provided, you can see the stats are more consumer-friendly and the ice tracker looks like an invaluable tool. Hopefully they will still provide access to the near-raw log files that stats junkies desire.

And if "in-game highlights" means highlights uploaded as the game is going on, well let's just say the my inner hockey nerd and the little tech geek inside me will be holding hands and dancing for joy.

Yahoo! for fantasy hockey?

At the same time, the NHL has also announced that they are partnering with Yahoo! to provide "the #1 fantasy games experience on the Internet".

Last year, our fantasy football league was done using CBS Sportsline but this year, we switched the Yahoo! which allows for more teams. I preferred the Sportsline offering.

However, if the description of what the NHL/Yahoo! partnership will provide is accurate, they just might come through on the claim that it will be #1 for fantasy sports.

The main benefit of this partnership is integrated video footage straight from the NHL which will be tied to each player. So you can track your players progress through the season and research for your next blockbuster trade using stats and video without needing to leave the site.

That is genius and, if properly implemented, will single-handedly bump it above any fantasy hockey offering I know of.

News.com picks up the story

The NHL has done enough with their new offering to get what I would almost call "mainstream" coverage from Cnet's news.com. I'm sure that caused a lot of back patting and cork popping in the NHL's marketing division.

The article contains one details that I didn't spot anywhere else. The Game Center Live feature will utilize Flash for the streaming video, doing away with Windows Media Player. A very savvy - if not obvious - move on their part.

The news.com article also contained some choice quotes from the NHL's senior VP of marketing, Perry Cooper. To summarize he informs us that NHL fans are tech savvy, are not "non-affluent", and don't necessarily cheer for the nearest team.

That's a lightbulb that needed to go off some time ago in the marketing department.

If this all gets pulled off properly they could launch themselves all the way to an A- report card.

"Illegal" Streams

There are of course other ways to catch games online, though not with any sort of service guarantee. One of the best ways to check out many live sporting events is via myp2p.eu.

If Yahoo! still streams games this year but requires you to be in the States, you can always get around that by using a free proxy server based in the States. Huge lists of proxies are easy to come by on the ol' Interweb.

Also, as noted by Jibble this morning, Justin.tv often has NHL game feeds.

*Note: I wouldn't have pimped my other, near non-existent blog but I couldn't find a release from TSN on the new feature. If anyone locates one, I'll gladly switch the link.

Dreams Do Come True

If anybody caught my post on my Centre Ice Online trials and tribulations, then you'll be happy to know that I will suffer no more.

Shaw Communications, one of the big 2 cable providers here in Saskatoon, has finally reached an agreeement with the NHL and will be offering the Centre Ice package to its subscribers. I threw my hands up in the air like I just won the lottery when this was announced. Might have pulled a muscle too but it's all good.

In the past I've followed the Avalanche with a hodge-podge of methods. Some as lowly as NHL.com radio, others via Sportsnet West/TSN at home and also n Versus in my boss's basement. And of course the brief aforementioned stint with Centre Ice Online.

Today is a glorious day and I truly can't wait for the season to start now!

Why Doesn't the NHL Want People to Watch Hockey?

I was responding to a post by jibblescribbits and realized I was going on and on and on and on...and on. So I figured that since things were boring on the Avs front, I'd put up a post here describing the trials and tribulations I went through trying to get Centre Ice Online.

Check out Jibble's post here on the actual television package troubles he had:
Horse...Doody (had to clean it up jibble, sorry ;)

I've had a similarly bad experience with the the Centre Ice Online deal. I signed up with about 15 games left in the season unfortunately. I didn't sign up sooner b/c I didn't know it existed until then. For the longest time I was going "Why don't they offer their games online?" They finally do and do you know how I heard about it? And it wasn't due to some great marketing by the NHL. No, I found it in a post on the Avalanche forum. I guess they think it'll "go viral" or something. Well done NHL marketing team.

The price at the time (we'll come back to the "at the time" part later) was $149USD. So about $175CDN. There were about 10 Avs games I'd be able to watch due to local restrictions, etc so I'm paying nearly $20/game. I was ok with it because the Avs were just starting their incredible run and I couldn't handle missing it and didn't want to keep bothering my boss to watch games at his place.

To begin with, signing up was an ordeal that took about 2 days. The signup form kept giving me an error message of, I kid you not, "Unknown error". Their support page was only visible to logged in members so that was incredibly helpful. There was no phone number anywhere. There was no "I'm having troubles signing up. Who do I contact?" FAQ entry. Hint to the NHL, when offering a service that you sign up for online, that's FAQ entry #1.

After tracking down a support form on nhl.com, which was just a general support form, I sent a message saying how I was trying to give them my money but they didn't seem to want it. Within a day someone got back giving the usual "clear cookies, what browser verion, blah blah". I'm in the web industry so I know the standard troubleshooting lines. It was none of those things. Their processing form was just broken. That was confirmed when I just repeatedly hit Submit about 100 times until it finally processed.

So I'm in! Success! No more troubles, right? Completely wrong. It turns out that logging in causes just as much headache as signing up does. And I have a hunch that it all boils back to them trying to check and ensure that you aren't sharing your login with anyone else (which I was NOT doing). Well that's all well and good but when it's causing troubles for your legit paying customers, it's time to re-think the system.

So I wanted to get in touch with someone about my log in troubles. I click the Support link on the login page. I get redirected to the login page. Awesome. So back to the nhl.com form indicating that I was trying to get in, it was 20 minutes to gametime and I really wanted to see this game. No dice. 2 days later I get a response saying "clear your cookies and try logging in again". Very helpful but I humor the request even though I'd cleared cookies many times trying to get this to work. It didn't work. They even sent a link to their support page. You know, the one you have to be logged in to to view. I think they were trying to see how frustrated I could get.

Finally I try to log in on my desktop the day of the Vancouver game in March. I was going from my laptop so I could sit on the couch and watch rather than on my aging computer chair. And I'm in! What? Are they checking for laptop computers and denying them or what? Anyways, I'm in. The Vancouver-Colorado game is on the way in 5 minutes. Sweet! The link becomes available. I click it. Nothing. The game doesn't start. Using Firefox I'm able to find the link to the stream, plug it into Windows Media Player and...broken link.

So off to the support page, which I can access now that I'm logged in, and I report a broken link. Then I resume trying but never could get in to see the game. 2 days later I get a response from support. "clear your cookies and try again". Well that's all well and good but I don't know if they know that hockey games end after 3 hours in the regular season.

I got to watch 2 or 3 more games online depending on if I could log in or not but it certainly was nowhere near the amount I'd expected to see. That fact was troublesome enough. Couple it with noticing that, exactly 3 days after I purchased it for $149, it was now being offered for $43! Obviously that doesn't seem fair that the price would drop so significantly after just 3 days so I decided to send a message to them. I simply asked why the price drop and that, with all the troubles I'd had, I don't see why I shouldn't get some sort of refund. They could have given me $20 back and I'd have been happy. No response. So I sent another message. No response. One more. No response.

So let's wrap up:
- Response time when giving them money: 24 hour turnaround
- Response time when unable to watch a game: 48 hour turnaround
- Response time when asking for money: Infinity

Why wouldn't they put extra effort into making an offering like this look more than a 2-cent add-on? Watching games on TVU was a better experience, though the stream quality was less. The first thing you have to do when offering a package that costs money is to make it better than the free offerings that exist. Or that did exist before the lawyers were about to get lawsuit happy. Lawsuit happy over "watching" games on a 240x180 player on my computer screen. Yeah, that's how fans *want* to watch games. No Gary, it's how some fans *have* to watch games.

Seems to me like they care about the money and not about fans actually watching the games. Which is sad because how do you expect to get and maintain fans if they can't even watch whatever game they want to watch? There are now 30 teams in the league. That's a lot of choices for a first-timer who says "Hey, hockey seems interesting. I wonder what team I should root for?". I guess Bettman figures you should just cheer for the team you're closest too since their games will be on local television anyways. Thanks Gary, but I don't want to cheer for the Flames or Oilers.

Unless the NHL and its marketing team pull their collective heads out of their collective butts, hockey will remain a tier-two sport in the USA and abroad. Canadian fans will always be there for it b/c we're stupid that way. We even put up with Pierre McGuire just to watch hockey. Some fans even convince themselves that they enjoy his commentary. That's how desperate we are to watch hockey. So why won't you let us?