Will MLS Surpass NHL Hockey anytime soon?

Oh - I'm sure it will be discussed. Again.

I have 2 questions to you. Define soon.

How does MLS go about capitalizing on fans who may or may not watch games on TV or attend games in person?

I have no idea if NHL is losing fans or not. They may be losing money but that's becaus ethey pay their players too much. Having seen soem playoff highlights - it looks like the fans are there.

MLS will surpass hockey when the USA wins the World Cup. And not a day sooner.

 

As I understand it, The NHL collective bargaining agreement expires after the 2003-2004 season, and right now the league and union are miles apart, with many hockey wags predicting a strike that might last as long as one or two seasons. It may not be a question of when soccer will rise to surpass hockey, but rather if hockey will fall below soccer. The problem is, the NHL and MLS seasons are pretty much polar opposites. So it's the nats who would have a chance for some exposure if the regular NHL air slot goes unfilled.

 

Sorry but it will be filled with NBA, WNBA, Football, Figure Skating, Strong Man competitions, The Lumber Jack Challenge, Magic the Gathering championships and X-games reruns.

 

I would guess it will be another 3 or 4 years for a few reasons.

1. Getting Stadiums built- By 2005 hopefully the MetroScum will have a stadium adding to the Crew, Galaxy, and Burn with their SSS. Hopefully the expansion teams will have their own as well and all the other teams will be close to approving a plan or building a SSS.

2. NHL- All indications point to a strike in 2004. If that is the case then hockey will still be recovering when in 2006...

3. The World Cup- A strong showing by the U.S. will not only bring exposure to soccer but will continue to make names like Donovan, Beasley, and Adu into household names.

I think that by 2007 or 2008 we will be able to say that MLS is a viable league and possibly more popular than the NHL.

 

How does a winter sport imploding help out a summer sport?

I've come to believe that soccer isn't even really in competition with baseball, even. There's room for us. The Fire and Galaxy do fine in competition with two baseball teams, after all. And it certainly wasn't the juggernaut of the Devil Rays and Marlins that closed down the Florida teams. Let alone the devotion to the Lightning and Panthers.

 

With all the leagues out there if the NHL was to suffer it would help MLS a little bit at least.

 

i don't want the NHL to implode or go away. And if it did i don't think it would do anything to really help MLS. MLS competes against hockey for what 2 months? Not very long, and thats the playoffs, so there aren't that many games anyways. Long live hockey and soccer, my two fav. sports. What a wacky american i am.

 

it all depends on where youre talkin about - the south? sure - columbus? maybe - denver, boston or chicago? D R E A M O N - personally i agree with Dan Loney; why should MLS popularity growth necessarily need to come out of another sport's decline? how about the decline in reading? should that make a difference? - id be more concerned with raising the quality of play nearer to the NHL standard (which is significantly high, especially during the playoffs) - popularity is more likely to rise because the product is substantial - my 2cents anyway...

 

First, I'm a huge soccer fan. That said:

No chance. It will never happen. Here's 10 reasons:

10)MLS will never have an answer to the speed of hockey, never - you take the highest caliber play in MLS and one thing stands out, it absolutely pales compared to a similar level play in the NHL
9)Legal hitting - we're a violent culture
8)Hockey has and probably always will have better announcers
7)Packed indoor arenas that put you a literally a foot away from the action
6)Hockey players dive ocasionally but they don't do log rolls and they don't beg
5)No pks in the NHL, you play until you score - the way it should be. Physical limits be damned.
4)the "tink" sound of a speeding puck careening off a thick metal pipe will always be more dramatic than the dullish sound of a ball hitting a bigger pipe
3)Game 7s
2)Playoff hockey - beards, facewashes, octopi, swallowing the whistle late and the post-series handshake. There's tradition, history, and wonderful nuances totally absent in MLS. There isn't one thing different or special about an MLS playoff game...yet.
1)MLS will have to get a real playoff system vs the bastardized cluster___ they have now

 

I think this will happen as soon as we get pro/rel.

And all MLS teams have reserve teams.

And they take the games off ESPN and put them on FOX.

And they go to a single table.

 

Soccer will never take Hockey's viewers or their TV ratings, but if the NHL has problems and slowly the league becomes less stable, if youth numbers go down (dont know any stats), if they have to stop paying the players so much..... then MLS/US Nat'l team (in combination, and not specifically one or the other) could move into that "4th sport" slot by default. Dont forget, the NHL expanded WAY too fast. Theres been talk of contraction. Would you rather contract 2 teams in a league's infancy to keep it growing steadily? or would you rather contract when your league's at its peak with a lot of national TV exposure? I think the NHL's situation with their contraction looks worse then MLS's a few years ago.

Despite all this, not many sports (even football) can beat a game 7 and the 5 overtimes. Playoff hockey might be the best thing in sports..... Certainly NHL ratings skyrocket in the playoffs to prove this. I know plenty of people that dont really care about it until the playoffs start.

Id say by 2010 MLS is on par with the NHL. If baseball were to slip up (ie. strike, contract, etc) then MLS could gain a little more spotlight. Baseball, IMHO, has been in a decline for a while now and it isnt showing signs of recovering. While still a very strong league, MLB has lost the swagger it had 12 years ago.

 

MLS surpassing NHL does not rely on NHL's implosion, just MLS's increasing popularity. Pro football didn't need the college game to "implode" to become more popular. It needed time.

Since everyone else is positing their standard issue "what's wrong with MLS" answer (e.g., promotion/relegation), here's my standard issue --

MLS will become more popular when people learn how to watch soccer. Soccer and hockey are relatively similar in terms of a bunch of players trying to get an object in another bunch players' net with a goalkeeper/tender in front of it. One of the reason's hockey is more popular is that it's an easier game to understand -- smaller space + fewer players = simpler game. There aren't as many tactical choices that hockey makes.

Soccer has a lot more players on a much bigger space. If you don't buy this, look at indoor soccer -- more scoring, simpler tactics -- which looks a lot like hockey. Americans don't know HOW to watch soccer. They can't understand that what looks like non-movement, kicking around is possession (the same way a 6 yard pass on 3rd and 4 is). When Americans learn to watch and understand the game, they'll begin to appreciate MLS and not a moment sooner. That's a very gradual process.

Hockey is easier to watch. I watch soccer with players who don't know what's going on screen (although they may know very well what to do on field). I watch hockey with people who've never put on a pair of ice skates, watch 2 matches (or "games" as they've become to be known) a year and become pretty versed in the game's intricacies. Why? Easier to get.

 

The NHL is in three times as many markets and fans are willing to shell out $60 a game 41 times a season to see an NHL game. The TV ratings may suck, but I don't think you can really compare. The sports play opposite seasons and the NHL playoffs blow any other domestic sports event away. Period.

You can't compare MLS to the NHL when a journeyman fourth-line NHL player makes the entire MLS team salary cap, when the NHL has 30 teams, when tickets to an NHL game cost $60 in the regular season and upwards of $200 in the playoffs, when the NHL has close to 100 years of history, a $600 million TV deal, and where the league is hands down the best in the world in its sport.

I love soccer, but until the US wins a world cup and MLS has 20 teams composed of the best players in the world, there's no way MLS beats the NHL. There may be more overall soccer support in this country, but the audience is too fractured between Mexico and various Euro leagues.

 

Well, i think that sooon is not the word.

Soccer needs a lot of more time to get into the American audiences, but i know a something for sure.

MLS will surpass NHL, when??, i don't really know.... sometime...

 

I have noticed some media members finally stepping up to say the NHL really isn't as "big" as we've been made to believe. That does NOT, repeat, does NOT translate into any positive yet for MLS, but someone someday may realize that the amount of media coverage hockey gets is simply unwarranted. A piece of that excess coverage could eventually go to MLS and that would be large.

I don't believe there are that many more diehard NHL fans than there are diehard MLS fans. I really don't. Most guys I know are conditioned to pretend they care a bit about the NHL and conditioned to not give a rip about MLS. In reality, they couldn't care less about either.

 

Except mine were sarcastic. I'm sure you got that.

 

Crazy Talk I Say

People dont develope loyalty for a team based on who plays for it. it may get you interested at first, but loyalty takes time.
loyalty is based on rivalries, based on the past. based on history.

when i moved to Long Island, no one gave a crap about Hockey in my town. I was hugely outspoken Rangers fan from way upstate close to Canada. my interest in Hockey fuled my buddies intrest. we developed rivalries as friends that has made all my old friends into Die Hard Islander fans. they still give me crap 12+ years after it all began. I hate the Yankees for the same reason. So we can all talk smack and enjoy watching a game that much more.

I have not got them into Soccer yet, but thats likely because i dont really have a favorite team yet. but rest asured that if I chose Dallas they would all choose Chicago

I personally am holding out for a NYS/Long Island team, but with my eye on the Metros

whatever. No history, no rivalries, no true fans, no where near as much fun

 

This is a good point, you might be right and you should have stopped here. But no, you have to explain the logic, proving the theory that even a blind squirel...

These statements prove only one thing - that you have little to no understanding of hockey. Nothing personal, but you are like a bad translator that has little knowledge of another countries launguage but slightly more than anyone around you. To your countrymen you appear informed and better able to communicate. To the other country's countrymen the gap in knowledge can't be missed.

 

I am too lazy/drunk to read the other posts, but here is how it goes:

NHL is dyinh because they are paying their players too much money. There are only a few owners who can keep up, but they lost their largest TV market when ESPN got the NBA

Baseball is a dying, the average fan is in their 40s, right now, every kid plays soccer growing up. I talked to my dad and he said he thought there would never be a day when he would know more about soccer than the Baltimore Orioles. Soccer is the next big thing in America, espically when the people in my age group (around 20), get disposiable incomes.

 

What sticks in my craw is the heavy promotion that ESPN has done for hockey, yet hasn't done diddly for soccer. No question, hockey has fans (however limited), but the potential is really in the world's game. Too bad ESPN heads can't figure that out.

 

I assume this is a knock against 8 of 10 teams making it. I agree, but as MLS expands it had better keep the playoff teams restricted to 8. The NHL was a joke for a while because "everybody" made the playoffs. That's not true anymore.

If it's a knock against MLS going to an aggregate system as they will be doing in the opening round this season, then I disagree.

 

What is funny to me is how people from the Northeast and Midwest have no prospective of what the hockey market in the South and West Coast is like.
I enjoy hockey, my friends enjoy hockey. But out here in California the hockey market isn't that big. This is true in many other parts of the nation as well. While there are NHL as well as minor league hockey teams throughout the nation, hockey still remains a regional sport as far as most people are concerned(look at the make up of most of the players in the league).
Soccer's popularity will surpass Hockey sometime in the near future. But soccer is still a few years away from this happening. There are many lessons that the MLS can learn from the NHL's success. Including how to successfully market a sport in small markets and how to increase the national footprint of a sport.

 

Define "surpass." Surpass with respect to what? If you're talking profits, I think MLS can surpass the NHL, possibly within the next 5 years. Financially, the NHL is a mess.

If you're talking popularity -- as measured by TV ratings and average attendance -- I think this, too, is possible within the next 10 years.

If you're talking about their respective places in the collective conscience of the American sports fan, I think we are a long, long, long way from that.