Yes, I'm sure the NHL just had a better brand, though I wouldn't be surprised if there's not as much of a gap between NHL and MLS anymore. And there's actually time in a hockey broadcast to sell to advertisers. So it's got that going for it.
I bet soccer (not MLS, world soccer) is more popular than hockey here in the US. Problem is, NHL fans are older and have more money, whereas as soccer fans are younger and poorer (generally speaking of course).
Hockey is more of a regional market. But we are in that region, so you can get more for ads here. But if you were correct, then the networks would have made that move a long time ago. They hadn't. However, they *are* beginning to make that gamble now--see both NBC's coverage of the EPL and Fox's Bundesliga coverage. Heck, Gladbach's game tomorrow is on channel 28. The last time I was able to watch Gladbach on broadcast TV was Soccer Made In Germany on PBS back in the early 1980s. So we shall see. The market will decide. I am not sure age is a determiner for the NHL. Baseball, maybe. But hockey is pretty fast moving and you see a lot of young fans at the games.
I would be inclined to agree that soccer as a whole is more popular than the NHL. But the problem goes back to the fact that hockey (and football and basketball and just about every other sport) have a lot of stoppages that can be used for commercials, which make them more profitable to air.
You see it in how tv is run in Europe. Here, like baseball, regular breaks. Europe?? All at the end or beginning of a show. No breaks. However, if soccer is "more popular" than hockey, it is a *very* recent development.
I'd imagine soccer as a whole is much more popular than hockey in the USA. It's just that soccer is so fragmented, there's not a single soccer league property that is anywhere near as popular as the NHL. The NHL is a $1.00 bill. League soccer is $1.50 in loose change with nothing bigger than a quarter. Or something like that.
And hockey is concentrated in certain regions, which gives it more power with local/regional advertisers in those regions.
That's pretty much what I meant. MLS doesn't beat out the NHL, but major soccer events seems to do much better than anything hockey. I would imagine that a combination of MLS, EPL, La Liga, Liga MX, etc. are much larger than hockey as a whole is. Granted, advertisers can't advertise on a generic soccer, they have to pick specific leagues, teams, networks, etc. I can't find good numbers (at least not quickly), but it certainly seems like MLS by itself isn't far behind the NHL anymore.
Was "channel surfing" on the way into work this morning, stopped on 99.7 for a minute, and the woman on there spent 10 minutes-an entire segment- talking about a twitter beef between Dom Tiberi and a crew fan, seemingly dealing with Tiberi and the fan arguing over going to matches, coverage, etc. Apparently they have Frankie on the show also pretty regularly. While it wasn't soccer talk, just interesting to hear the Crew mentioned for a while.
I followed it, still trying to figure out if Tiberi is just trolling crew fans #SupportersSupport, that's why they had the TIFO with Crew Insider.
Andrew Erickson is the new Dispatch beat reporter. He's a young guy but seems to tweet a lot. I'm looking forward to see what he brings. He went to UCLA and seems to be from Pittsburgh. Hopefully he doesn't tweet about the latter.
Meh I don't care about Pittsburgh. I haven't followed any Cincinnati teams in a while. And I never followed any teams from the mistake by the lake. Eboe
I'm waiting for Tom Reed to get back to me with Erickson twitter. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk
There is a Columbus/Pittsburgh rivalry (NHL), admittedly not as big as Cleveland or Cincy's rivalries with Pittsburgh, but one does exist.
I have no idea how to post a tweet. Someone please educate me. Andrew's handle is @AErickson_Trib I found it because Jardy happened to congratulate him on his new position. He says he starts Wednesday.
http://soc.cr/c4pD309meT6 Loughnane sees room to grow and wants to tap into the "Acura Employee" fan demographic as well as sell out every home game.
Here's some amazing local media coverage. Guillermo bless whomever this is. The greatest thing you will see all day, courtesy of @YellowNatArmy #CrewSC pic.twitter.com/hVwKfwGziD— Beppe⁹⁶ ⭐⭐⭐ (@buckeyedinapoli) February 28, 2017
Some Star Wars garbage. I don't give two shits about that, so I immediately stopped watching about half a second in to the video.
My flip phone works quite well for me. Now Mrs KG's phone is so old it doesn't even have a camera.... But seriously, I was looking at this on my computer. Guessing work blocked it somehow.
That was brilliant, and Star Wars bores the crap out of me, too. C'mon, Darth Garber? The Acura system? That's some pretty good stuff, right there.