In my last post I wrote about the exorbitant amount of money that has been spent on TV rights for professional sports. The numbers are in the multi-billions and are of interest as the NHL is set to renegotiate their Canadian TV rights in two years and with big players like Apple TV or Amazon potentially being involved the deal should surpass the $5.4B the league got from Rogers. For more on that click here: https://www.steveclarkmedia.com/post/the-future-of-the-canadian-national-nhl-broadcasting-rights
The main reason for this post is to address some of the underneath products and assess their relative worth in a very crowded sports league/content market. For the purposes of this, I will assess the CHL as it's the league I'm most associated with through my broadcasting with the OHL. The CHL though has a ton of competition on top of the all major sports. Just in the last five years Canada has seen a new men's soccer league, a women's hockey league, a new basketball league and soon will start up a women's soccer league. That's a lot of sports competing for viewership eyeballs and butts in seats and on the media side of things networks and channels such as TSN , Sportsnet and the CBC have to think long and hard about what league they feel is financially viable for them. Productions cost a lot of money, and there needs to be a return on investment. It's a daunting process for leagues like the CHL who may have to pony up some money for the rights. No billion dollar offers here!
Currently the CHL is tied to TSN who took over the rights from Sportsnet a few years ago. Sportsnet tried to pair off the NHL and the CHL and made a real effort to try and create a night for junior hockey when they did their Friday Night Hockey. The games they picked were good, the on-air product was very solid with R.J. Broadhead, Sam Cosentino and Jeff Marek being the mainstays on-air and they were truly invested with the junior hockey product. They essentially did weekly games, and then picked up some playoff games before covering the Memorial Cup in its entirety. Towards the latter stages of the relationship the network tried Saturday afternoons in order to drum up viewership. Neither dedicated night/afternoon really caught on consistently with viewers and it had nothing to do with the on-air product. The main reason was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, or trying to promote a league that is largely regional on a national platform. The audience simply did not care enough for teams outside their local market and they most certainly did not care about other leagues that much. Moose Jaw and Kamloops weren't really gung-ho about what was going in London and Rimouski and the feeling was mutual. Sportsnet chose to focus on their NHL regional and national products and TSN scooped up the rights and gave it their best shot.
Junior hockey fans were happy to see the CHL on TSN as it was hope that the league would be tethered with TSN's wildly successful production of the World Junior Tournament and perhaps there would be some audience overrun. You could see the stars of tomorrow with their junior team and then the best of the best over the Christmas holidays. The first year TSN took the approach that essentially Sportsnet took with a weekly game, some playoffs and the entire Memorial Cup. They used young and up and coming broadcasters largely and partnered with BarDown, their off the wall content deliverer. Hockey fans hoping to get the sage wisdom of Bob Mackenzie and the well-established voice of Gord Miller along with their NHL crew and panel would instead see younger, talented broadcasters who continued to provide good game coverage and BarDown who tried to make the product hip and youthful with some skits, highlights and other assorted content. TSN ran into the same issues that Sportsnet did. There was nothing wrong with how the games were produced and who was calling the games, but you were not getting TSN's A crew and the audience was largely regional and really did not make a dent on the national stage. The audience for CHL hockey is also not craved and consumed by a youthful demographic despite the game being played by teenagers. Go to a CHL game and you will see an older, more family oriented crowd extremely dedicated to their team. It did not have the vibe of NCAA college basketball and football. A lot of the fans were also dedicated to the local coverage of their team on community TV and on a smaller basis radio. They had forged a connection with the players who avidly participated in the community and the broadcasters. You could chat with players, and coaches before the game and at the bus after games.
TSN, to their credit, decided to unveil a bolder strategy for the 2nd year of their partnership. Except for the Top Prospects Game, they would not cover any regular season games and instead drive the audience to TSN Plus, a digital subscription model that would house local broadcasts under the TSN online brand. They would have a game of the week and TSN would pick up all of the CHL finals and the Memorial Cup. Not covering the league on a weekly basis on the main channels was a risky move because if you do not get the digital audience to buy in you run the risk of people forgetting about the league and there would be no momentum going into your big tournament , the Memorial Cup. When it came to their playoff coverage, TSN would also suffer from an awful run of luck as all three championships were decisively one-sided. No seven game thrillers or edge of your seat stuff. They were all sweeps. The Memorial Cup did provide some outstanding moments and a very exciting final and that helped TSN produce an excellent Memorial Cup.
This year would be TSN's third year investing in the league and how they are going to cover it as yet to be released. My guess is that they will keep the same model as last year. TSN Plus would have a game of the week and then the main network jumps in late in the playoffs and then the Memorial Cup.
On the whole the CHL is a tough sell. It's a big league with 60 teams in it divided over three leagues. The leagues would actually be best served in trying to strike their own regional deal with TSN or Sportsnet or even a local or independent tv station rather than all three leagues trying a national type deal. Rogers does not seem to want to wade into Junior Hockey waters anymore and CBC dipped a toe in and did a handful of games the first year TSN had the rights but then bowed out the 2nd year. Plus, TSN and CBC have invested heavily into the PWHL, the new women's soccer league and women's international hockey. TSN has actually cornered the market on Hockey Canada related content and covers the U18 and up for both men's and women's competition. TSN also seems to have veered towards Canadian athletes in other pro leagues like the WNBA as its cheaper content that they do not have to produce themselves. That leaves the CHL in a conundrum and at the risk of getting lost in a crowded TV market place. CBC has little to no interest in sports outside of the Olympics and the PWHL. TSN is all in on the new women's soccer league as well as the PWHL. Where does that leave the CHL? Right now you could argue that they are below the CEBL who have their gams on the TSN main network with legendary voice Chuck Swirsky, the former Raptor and current Chicago Bulls broadcaster as the main voice.
The CHL is wise to keep growing locally, and regionally and investing in continuously looking to improve their TV product which varies from market to market. The OHL has some top notch productions both on-and off-air and some with radio feeds over scoreboard type visuals. That needs to be improved and/or streamlined, keeping in mind that there are budgetary restrictions but at the same time there are a lot of creative things being done at the local level. I feel our local broadcast for the Niagara IceDogs is on par with NHL regional broadcasts thanks to the dedication and creativity of our crew both on and off the air.
There should be an improved attempt at relationships with TSN and the local broadcasters. Maybe there's a highlight show, or junior hockey show that can be packaged. There are lots of ideas out there in the form of podcasts and video content. If you feed content to the main network, they can leverage that on their highlights shows, online and as part of the broader hockey coverage. The CHL has to market itself more comprehensively not only to their TV audience but also to fend off NCAA competition in terms of players. It's not easy. I've said it with university sports and I will say it with the CHL. Focus on local, continue to improve your broadcasts and find ways to create compelling content for the big networks that do not involve scandals or negative coverage. I am not saying that you ignore such negative coverage because others like Rick Westhead will investigate it and lets face it, hockey culture is always going to be on the radar and under the microscope. So, back to the ideas. Start with an OHL Draft Show that you can show to a wider market. The OHL does one but its all on-line and pretty bare bones in terms of production. That said, the infrastructure for the show is there and the content is pretty good, so you have something to work with. You get the local ducks in a row and have a good relationship with the good networks, you can start to chip away on that national stage and build some momentum heading into the playoffs and Memorial Cup. It might not be the news that fans want to hear but at this point its the best model. The good news is that the CHL is excellent at creating content though daily highlights, players and plays of the week, profiling players, and ensuring most games are broadcast live. That infrastructure in place will serve them well going forward.
Steve Clark
Steve has called junior hockey for the Niagara IceDogs for 17 years for YourTV
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