Hockey struggles to build TV audience amid static

The Stanley Cup finals are approaching, and hockey couldn’t be in better shape.

A late-season NHL television broadcast drew almost 10% of the country’s residents, no matter that neither team was playoff-bound. First-round playoff TV ratings dipped but rebounded nicely for subsequent rounds. And Sidney Crosby, who has been touted by the nation’s media since he was a boy, became the league’s best player.

Wait a minute, that’s the hockey story in Canada.

Up north, fathers teach sons how to play the national game, families gather around the TV for “Hockey Night in Canada” and ratings soar when a Canadian team reaches the Cup finals.

South of the border, where 24 of 30 NHL teams are based, hockey remains mired in problems.

The league continues to recuperate from the costly labor lockout that erased the 2004-05 NHL season. The sport dramatically lags behind football, basketball and baseball in TV ratings and broadcast income. And the glut of rival sports programming spilling over from broadcast TV into cable makes it tougher for the NHL to gain traction.

“Hockey didn’t get into a mess overnight and it’s not going to dig its way out of it overnight,” said David Carter, executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute. “They’ll tell you that they didn’t fix everything that needed to be fixed when they finally decided to come back onto the ice.”

Two measures of hockey’s TV troubles came during the NHL playoffs. Last weekend, NBC broke from an Ottawa Senators/Buffalo Sabres game in overtime to broadcast a pre-race show for the Preakness Stakes, directing fans to cable network Versus. And a first-round NBC broadcast of a Calgary Flames/Detroit Red Wings game generated lower ratings than the poker tournament that preceded it.

But NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman maintains that hockey is largely on track after its lost season. “The definition of a troubled franchise has changed dramatically,” he said. “We don’t have any franchises going out of business. We don’t have any franchises in real distress.”

The league is believed to have grown its regular-season revenue by about 6% to $2.3 billion this year -- about where the league was before the lost season. The NHL had skated itself into a corner before the labor dispute, in part because of a rapid expansion in Sunbelt cities without a strong hockey heritage. Player salaries also had surged, and heading into the canceled 2004-05 season, the league claimed a $272-million loss.

The new labor agreement reached in 2005 gave NHL owners immediate financial relief with a 24% player salary cut. A revenue-sharing plan was instituted to help weaker franchises and bolster parity on the ice. Bettman acknowledged that it will take time to fix all of the league’s problems: “Those are not things that happen by throwing a light switch. They take time.”

As it stands, even a winner on the ice easily can slip from profit to loss.

The Carolina Hurricanes turned a $10-million profit while winning the Stanley Cup last season. The franchise spent $10 million in the off-season to retain key players and led the league in ticket revenue growth by setting another regular-season attendance record. But the team missed the playoffs -- along with postseason ticket revenue -- and will lose money.

“We walk a very, very fine line,” Hurricanes Chief Executive Jim Rutherford said. “Our owner made the decision to continue to keep this team competitive, to keep it appealing enough so that more people will come to see our games.”

NHL franchises focus hard on attendance because the league can’t command broadcast riches enjoyed by the NFL ($4 billion annually), Major League Baseball ($600 million) and the NBA ($600 million). Its NBC deal calls for profit-sharing rather than a guaranteed check, and the Versus cable network will pay the NHL about $60 million this year.

The average number of viewers watching the nine regular-season NHL games that NBC broadcast fell by 2% from a year ago to 1.3 million, and viewership for playoff games through the conference finals was down 5% to 1.4 million.

Average viewership for Versus’ regular-season coverage rose 31% to 212,366, and is up by 7% to 409,369 so far during the playoffs. The network has expanded its reach to 72 million households, up from 69 million last year.

But hockey has struggled in the U.S. to keep viewers. National TV ratings have slipped since the 1995-96 season, when, according to Nielsen Media Research, NHL broadcasts averaged 2.9 million viewers during the regular season and 3.3 million viewers during the playoffs.

Bettman maintains that hockey’s ratings are relatively healthy given changing consumer tastes. The NHL was an early sports pioneer in striking online deals with YouTube, Google and Joost and is intent upon distributing hockey through whatever media its fans prefer, he said.

As for the criticism drawn by hockey two years ago when it left ESPN for the lesser-known Versus? Paul D. Staudohar, an economics professor at Cal State East Bay who tracks sports issues, sees an upside: “Versus does a good job of broadcasting hockey. ESPN gave fans a bunch of wise guys who didn’t know their hockey all that well. Versus doesn’t have to talk down to [knowledgeable] fans.”

Carter described the “obsession with TV ratings as misguided when it comes to the NHL.... Their challenge is to continue to revive interest in the sport at the local level, make the game exciting and do a great job of marketing their sport.”

To do that, hockey will rely upon such stalwarts as George Ross, a 41-year-old Manhattan Beach resident who grew up watching the Kings and has held Ducks season tickets since the franchise took to the ice. Ross frequently invites casual fans to see games in person. “Hockey on TV isn’t nearly as compelling a story as it is in person,” he said.

One gripe Ross has about hockey is his constant struggle to figure out which channel is carrying the games -- KDOC, Versus, FSN and NBC each carry some hockey.

Meanwhile, the league concentrates hard on building ticket sales.

The NHL set attendance records of about 20.8 million during each of the last two regular seasons -- though skeptics say deep discounting helped to fill seats. The first 55 Stanley Cup playoff games drew an announced average of 18,364, filling 99.5% of available seats.

There have been disappointments. The NHL’s longest-running sellout streak (452 regular season and playoff games) ended when the Detroit Red Wings failed to fill the house for a first-round playoff game.

Other franchises are hoping to pick up where Detroit left off.

The Ducks sold out the last 22 games of their regular season and will sell out every postseason game. The club expects to sell about 14,000 season tickets for next season -- up from 7,000 two years ago when owners Henry and Susan Samueli acquired the team. To broaden the sport’s fan base, the Ducks plan to build new ice rinks, or partner with existing operators, so youngsters can get ice time.

“We know that we need to keep getting people interested in our sport,” said Tim Ryan, the Ducks’ chief operating officer.

Carter described fan recruitment as mandatory for hockey’s long-term survival: “In some markets, you have to wonder if everyone who follows hockey is in attendance.”

Some newer franchises in Sunbelt locations lack a strong hockey heritage and will need new fans to help weather inevitable losing streaks.

The NHL is betting that parity will keep fans interested.

But, as with most sports, TV viewership generally rises when teams from bigger media markets are playing.

“Obviously, more people in big markets will watch the games if their team is in it,” Bettman said. “But it’s more important that the hockey is terrific, competitive and entertaining ... and all of the franchises have to have a chance. That’s the only way to make sure that more fans will be connected.”

greg.johnson@latimes.com

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On thin ice

Stanley Cup TV ratings have been edging down for several years. Other leagues also have struggled to retain viewers, but the NHL lags dramatically behind major team sports in its championship finals. The NBA drew an average of 12.9 million viewers for last year’s championship series, Super Bowl XLI drew 93 million viewers and the 2006 World Series broadcasts averaged 15.8 million viewers:

*--* Year NETWORK TC RA SH HH AV TEAMS 2006 NBC/OLN* 7 1.8 3 1.9 2.8 Carolina/Edmonton 2004 ABC/ESPN** 7 2.2 4 2.4 3.3 Tampa Bay/Calgary 2003 ABC/ESPN ** 7 2.4 4 2.5 3.6 New Jersey/Anaheim 2002 ABC/ESPN** 5 3.6 7 3.8 5.7 Detroit/Carolina 2001 ABC/ESPN** 7 3.3 6 3.4 5.0 Colorado/New Jersey 2000 ABC/ESPN** 6 3.7 8 3.7 5.5 New Jersey/Dallas

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KEY -- TC: telecasts; RA: ratings; SH: share; HH: households (in millions); AV: average viewers (in millions). Cup winner in bold. * -- combined ratings for NBC (five games) and OLN (two games).

** -- combined ratings for ESPN (first two games) and ABC (remaining games).

NOTE -- Entire 2005 season canceled because of lockout.

Source: Nielsen Media Research