Viola arena no more? (IAW is back)

CaldicotDevil

Well-Known Member
#61
But why would the NHL be interested? We're so far behind many mainland European countries that we're not even on the radar. Countries that will produce high quality prospects every year and which will buy their merchandise in huge volumes are what they care about. Hockey is an international game. AF has hardly any international footprint worldwide, do they'll take any opportunity to expand their presence.
Agree, we're well down in the pecking order in terms of quality however I thought NHL may of sniffed at it considering it's the same language and with 67mil people it's a large potential market size.

Also agree on the prospects however it wasn't too long ago you never saw Germans in the NHL now they're popular draft picks. They had a huge reshuffle of the youth system and now are flourishing. There's no reason we couldn't look at their blueprint and try to adapt it the EIHL.

https://www.nhl.com/news/german-hoc...-top-prospect-tim-stuetzle-others/c-319088082
 

moggy#9

Well-Known Member
Thread starter #62
Agree, we're well down in the pecking order in terms of quality however I thought NHL may of sniffed at it considering it's the same language and with 67mil people it's a large potential market size.

Also agree on the prospects however it wasn't too long ago you never saw Germans in the NHL now they're popular draft picks. They had a huge reshuffle of the youth system and now are flourishing. There's no reason we couldn't look at their blueprint and try to adapt it the EIHL.

https://www.nhl.com/news/german-hoc...-top-prospect-tim-stuetzle-others/c-319088082
We may have a decent sized population but outside of the main hockey cities most people will barely be aware that it's even played in the UK. When you have major cities like London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Southampton and Newcastle not able to sustain a top flight team, or even have a decent rink, we're not going to get taken seriously. The UK isn't an environment that sustains a range of sports well like Germany does. Outside the lines of football and rugby coverage is limited. Let's face it the various TV sports channels would rather show football from some obscure overseas league than a domestic minor sport. The only way for us to get better coverage, and to improve our junior development is to have more rinks from basic sharing facilities to proper arenas. No amount of clever marketing is going to help if your closest ice is an hour or more's drive away.
 
#63
The NHL would never be interested in spending its time or money in developing hockey in the UK regardless of whether we have great arenas around the UK any more than the NFL are interested in the UK.
The NFL are interested in London!
Not Cardiff, Sheffield or Edinburgh or any other provincial city.
And to break into and make a success of a London based franchise its all about money, ie; bums on seats consistently filling your arena when football has a stranglehold on domestic sport in the UK.
London is unique amongst other European capital cities in as much as it has 12 professional football teams of which 6 of them are in the Premier league alone.
Compare that to Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Rome, Prague etc and there‘s half your problem. Couple that with the fact that the sheer volume of games in a hockey season compared to the NFL season. An NFL regular season is just
8 home games!
A lot easier to sellout 90000 seats at Wembley at an average of not much short of £100 per ticket and the fact that the NFL has a proven track record of selling out its 4 game package in London and you can see why the NFL is backing its product here.
If we want British Ice Hockey to expand and flourish we are gonna have to do it ourselves, but at present the numbers for hockey in London just do add up.
 

Kevlar68

Well-Known Member
#64
So if NFL is interested in London how come their BAF team London Blitz play to hardly anyone? London Knights Ice Hockey had bigger crowds.
BAFL isn't getting any bigger just because the NHL plays at Wembley. I don't even think its a professional sport here, I may be wrong.
There are more players than spectators at a Blitz game. I've seen kids Sunday morning football have more spectators.


So the question once again is if EIHL is a bigger spectator sport than BAFL why does the NFL get more TV coverage instead of NHL?
 
#65
So if NFL is interested in London how come their BAF team London Blitz play to hardly anyone? London Knights Ice Hockey had bigger crowds.
BAFL isn't getting any bigger just because the NHL plays at Wembley. I don't even think its a professional sport here, I may be wrong.
There are more players than spectators at a Blitz game. I've seen kids Sunday morning football have more spectators.


So the question once again is if EIHL is a bigger spectator sport than BAFL why does the NFL get more TV coverage instead of NHL?
The BAFL is an amateur league and has nothing to do with the NFL. The London Blitz are an amateur team in an amateur league. The standard of play is poor, the facilities are poor and if I’m not mistaken it’s probably free to watch their games.
North American sports, be they NFL NHL NBA or MLB will alwayes be at best niche sports in the UK and as such
only the very best would survive let alone prosper. I draw your attention to NFL Europe formerly World League of American Football of the 1990’s early 2000’s that had actual big NFL funding and backing but ultimately failed (costing the NFL tens of millions in losses) because the standard was nowhere near good enough to attract regular spectators in large enough amounts.

As to your question regarding why does NFL get more TV coverage than the NHL , it’s down to a number of important factors.
NFL live games are shown throughout a Sunday evening from 6pm not at 2am on a Tuesday morning!
NFL has been on UK tv in the same time slot since 1984
NFL teams play 16 regular season games and as such EVERY GAME is important and meaningful.
NFL is much bigger and far more popular than the NHL , which is very much the poor relation of the Big4!
NFL attracts bigger sponsorship deals and generates much more money to reinvest in promo and advertising.

But the main reason is its MUCH easier to watch live NFL on TV!
 
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