This morning started off like any other morning for me. I took my dog Woodford out right after awakening and he somehow managed to piss a gallon on my floor in the ten feet between his crate and my door, then I proceeded to go through my morning half ass workout so I can tell myself I was productive today. However as I was leaving the gym this morning something caught my eye that I just couldn’t let slide, and it wasn’t the old guy in the locker room being all too comfortable feeling a little bit of a breeze downstairs.
As you know I’m already anti-ESPN + NHL, but these last couple of months have only made things more clear: the NHL partnering with ESPN is going to cost the league exponentially and set the NHL ten years or more. During the NHL playoffs ESPN made over 500 posts on Instagram, less than 25 of them were about hockey. We had potentially the craziest free agency in hockey in over a decade, but you’d never know because all ESPN is concerned about is what Lebron’s Starbucks order is that day or debating is Patrick Mahomes more hung than Tom Brady ~74 times per week. The NHL season starts in less than 30 days, and what the fuck is ESPN talking about?
If a pop star is ending the Chiefs dynasty by going on a coffee date with their already very social-media active Tight End. Until Taylor writes a ballad called loving him was Red Kingdom ripping Travis apart that girls can then worship more than the Bible for years to come, I don’t want to hear it. I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if this time next year my TV said “Next Up: Did Travis drop that Redzone pass because of THAT Taylor Swift lyric? Stay tuned once we finish analyzing Dak Prescott’s prostate exam and what it means for the NFC East going forward”.
I don’t give a fuck if this is even a sarcastic topic by ESPN. 1. Because ESPN’s sense of humor is comparable to your dad saying the same fart joke for the 17th time that day and 2. because even if it is, they’re literally making up bullshit topics instead of discussing the sport that their company paid $400 million a year to have on their airwaves.
Now I know what you may be thinking. The NHL is getting $400 million a year from ESPN, who cares if they’re completely ignoring the existence of the sport every day.
The reason I do is this: there once upon a time as recent as the 1990’s when the NHL and NBA weren’t that far apart from each other in terms of revenue and popularity, and what changed that is the NBA made a conceited effort to grow their game while the NHL decided to sit back and well, not.
In 1993-1994 the NHL’s revenue was $732 million while the NBA was around $925 million. So the NBA was larger, but only by 26%. Today the NHL is around $5.7 billion, while the NBA reached $10 billion this past season giving it a 75% advantage over the NHL. Looking at their growth separately the NHL has grown $4.96 billion, while the NBA has grown over $9 billion. Why? Because the NBA along with their TV deals has made conscious efforts to grow their game, while the NHL does dumb shit like not let their players play in the olympics (or any best on best tournament for that matter) and sign a lengthy TV deal with a company that is a wheelchair with pedals when it comes to growing the NHL.
Is the NHL going to make solid money in the short term on this TV deal with ESPN? Absolutely. My point is that although it is a lot of money up front over the next several years, the lack of growth for the game of hockey is going to cost the league billions over the next 15-20 years. Gary went for short term gains over long term prosperity and it’s going to cost the owners, the players, and most importantly us degenerates who love cracking chilly ones watching the games on TV.
If the NHL was still with NBC or quite literally any other network on earth, we could at least expect the NHL to get some coverage over Travis Kelce taking T-Swift to Starbucks.
Fuck Gary Bettman, fuck the Chicago Blackhawks for getting Connor Bedard when the entire world knows you don’t deserve him, and fuck ESPN. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
The Morning Skate 