Monday, August 22, 2005

More Proof That No One Cares About Hockey

Okay hockey fans get ready. The NHL announced Thursday it has reached a two-year deal that will put games on Outdoor Life Network, starting on opening night in October.
In case you didn’t know OLN is known for broadcasts of the Tour de France, and it now takes over hockey cable broadcasts from ESPN. For the second time in a matter of months, ESPN turned down the opportunity to keep the games on the all-sports network.
OLN is only available in 64 million households, compared to 90 million that have ESPN. So why would ESPN not want to have the hockey market? Because people just don’t care about the sport. Even before the lock-out ESPN was losing a ton of money on their hockey broadcast because people were not tuning in.
No since the lock out took away an entire season fans have moved on and so has sports television. I hope that the powers that be in the other professional sports (MLB, NBA, NFL) take note of this. You can’t kill a season without killing your sport!