It won’t happen overnight, or even next year, but it seems outdoor hockey is going the way of aircraft carrier college basketball. Both were transcendent ideas at the time of inception. Both worked beautifully; for a while, but then over-expanded rapidly beyond their demand.
Now with the San Jose Sharks hosting the L.A. Kings Saturday night, in the latest iteration of the NHL Stadium Series, you’ll see the best example yet of outdoor hockey jumping the shark. Apologies for the coincidental pun.
Joe Pavelski and the Sharks (29-21-8, 66 pts) take on Jonathan Quick and the L.A. Kings (25-18-12, 62 pts) at Levi’s Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers, in Santa Clara, California. It’s a fantastic match-up, and it will probably be a great game, but it will still get very disappointing ratings.
Coming off the heels of the worst rated Winter Classic in history, you now have one sports market that is notoriously apathetic (L.A. Kings) taking on a lukewarm at best sports market (S.J. Sharks).
There is a major reason Los Angeles is such a poor* sports* town*, and it isn’t related to weather and beaches (and all the other similar cliches applied to Miami every time poor attendance at a sporting event in South Beach becomes headline news).
It’s that Los Angeles is a town of transplants.
Two NFL teams couldn’t make it there, and if the NFL is arrogant and tone deaf enough to go back, they’ll fail a third time. In L.A. lots of people love sports. They just love the teams that they grew up loving while living in other states. Why do you think Las Vegas has no sports teams?
It’s a huge, world reknowned city. However, so few people who live in Vegas are actually from there. L.A. isn’t that extreme, but it’s similar. The Bay Area is more of a homegrown market, you could say it’s “better in this regard,” but it’s not a market that can move the needle. Not for a nice sport like hockey.
Also, did we mention that the game doesn’t even start until 10 p.m. in the eastern time zone, where most of the country’s population lives?
Despite the fact that this one is meaningful: the L.A. Kings and the S.J. Sharks are battling in a closely-matched Pacific Division, with four points separating the second-place Sharks and fifth-place Kings, it still won’t generate buzz. That lack of a buzz (similar to the low level of excitement for the Winter Classic this season) will only further drive home the point to the NHL that outdoor hockey is on the decline.
The death of aircraft carrier college basketball (which we’ve chronicled here) was swift and decisive, while hockey al fresco will be a very slow degeneration; until one day, the costs outweigh the benefits. Logistical problems brought an end to both.
It turns out outdoor hockey rinks don’t react well to sun. (Who knew?) Sunlight glare is actually very bad for ice skating. It turns out basketball shouldn’t be played out at sea. Bodies of water are actually bad for the playing surface.
Dissipation of outdoor hockey will be gradual. Step one (the novelty wearing off) was initiated a long time ago. That’s critical because novelty and originality is what made this interesting in the first place. On October 6, 2001. Spartan Stadium set a then-world record for the largest crowd at an ice hockey game with 74,544. The 3-3 tie saw the college football stadium filled to 103.4% capacity.
On December 11, 2010, we saw Cold War II, with Michigan hosting MSU at Michigan Stadium. UM billed the game as “The Big Chill at the Big House.” The attendance record from the first game was officially re-broken as 104,173 fans packed into Michigan’s football stadium, the third largest in the world and the biggest in the United States.
The Hockey City Classic (which drew about 2-3,000 fans at time of face off a couple weeks ago) is pretty much the college version of the NHL’s “Winter Classic” or “Stadium Series.” Or as they call it in Canada, the “Heritage Classic.” The Hockey City Classic couldn’t even start on time, due to logistical failures, but college hockey has a very narrow audience to begin with.
Applying the failures of that event to the general concept only goes so far. The fact that the NHL has three different names for “an event” that is actually the same exact thing tells you all you need to know. This is Econ 101, supply and demand at work.
Michigan St. does indeed have a truly visionary A.D. in Mark Hollis. He was instrumental in creating both aircraft carrier college basketball and outdoor hockey. So maybe he can save it?
The L.A. Kings and San Jose Sharks certainly won’t.
Actually, ESPN is the only thing that can save it. Hockey is a nice sport in America because ESPN abandoned it. They still overlook it to this day. If they want to regain interest in the sport, then maybe hockey could be the fourth major sport again and with it the popularity of outdoor hockey will again surge.
It’s steadily waning and will continue to wane. Because ESPN is more powerful than Fox Sports, NBC Sports, CBS Sports and Turner combined.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital, eBay, Google News and CBS Interactive. You can read Banks’ feature stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye newspaper and listen to him on KOZN 1620 The Zone.
Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)
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