Kukla's Korner Hockey
The Business Side Of Gary Bettman
by Paul on 02/02/18 at 09:09 AM ET
Comments (2)
from Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star,
As for the business: Bettman won the lockouts, a cancelled Stanley Cup aside, so owners have a better chance to make money. But the league’s transactions involving significant players have largely frozen up. (Erik Karlsson, Drew Doughty, and even Carey Price should all be given the chance to prove this wrong.) Bettman has built a league where fun is either awkward or discouraged, where personality is stamped down, where the game itself just isn’t as interesting as it could be, or should be. It’s so often small thinking, me-first thinking, change-the-rules-on-long-tail-contracts thinking. John Scott was the best thing to happen to the all-star game in decades, and the league responded by making sure it would never happen again.
Global development is a loss leader, so it’s been a failure. Hockey has become the only sport on earth that cannot figure out a way to send any variation of best-on-best to the Olympics. You can argue over whether it’s the International Olympic Committee’s fault, or the International Ice Hockey Federation’s fault, or the NHL Players’ Association’s fault, or the NHL’s fault. The answer to that question is probably yes.
There are people who will tell you the death of Philadelphia owner and Comcast boss Ed Snider changed the balance among owners to the Jeremy Jacobs and Boston Bruins school of What’s In It For Me Right Now. But it lands on Bettman’s ledger more than anybody’s.
Filed in: NHL Talk, | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: gary+bettman
Comments
Yeah, but how many teams are owned by cable companies?
Posted by EthrDemon on 02/02/18 at 05:20 PM ET
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The NHL still isn’t on regular broadcast TV. You have to have cable to see the games. If the league had half a clue they could start their own channel like Comet or Antenna TV and be on the broadcast networks but it would take extra work and they are too lazy I guess. The occasional games NBC puts on don’t build a following.
Posted by Royal Grand Exalted PooBah from the basement of the Alamo on 02/02/18 at 01:26 PM ET