Hockey May Be on Thin Ice : ‘Old School’ Style of Business Said to Limit Growth

To New York sports agent Lou Oppenheim, the names of the divisions say it all.

In major league baseball, basketball and football, the teams are grouped into geographic divisions called East, West, Central, Pacific and so on. But in the National Hockey League, there are such names as the Campbell Conference, after a revered former league president, and the Smythe Division, after the late owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

“It’s kind of nice they’re named after some of the leaders of old-time hockey,” Oppenheim said. “But that’s where their heads are still at: old-time hockey.”

As the first strike in the NHL’s 75-year history threatens to wipe out the Stanley Cup championship playoffs--the teams’ most profitable part of the season--critics say that the league’s management culture is at least partly responsible for hockey’s inability to achieve the kind of success enjoyed by the other major sports.

David Mills, a University of Alberta history professor who studies hockey, said that many of the league’s owners have historically tended to put short-term self-interest ahead of the future of the league as a whole.

Pro hockey, he said, has “always been a bunch of fiefdoms,” with team owners content to tend their regional markets without regard to the sport’s overall profile. Such attitudes have contributed to the NHL’s failings in marketing and lack of innovative approaches to boost growth. The league lacks a national television contract, has relatively minuscule licensing revenue and lags other leagues in attendance growth.

The league’s old school attitudes are reflected in the current strike, Mills said.

To be sure, Major League Baseball and the National Football League have had severe labor relations problems of their own in recent years--including player strikes--and more trouble may be on the way. The National Basketball Assn. was so deep in the doldrums in the early 1980s that several franchises were in danger of folding simultaneously.

The NHL, by contrast, has had smooth skating. The players were relatively docile under former union head Alan Eagleson, with issues such as arbitration and free agency never generating the kind of conflict they did in the other sports. Attendance was stable, salaries under control and profits assured.

Until now.

On Tuesday, the players union rejected the owners’ latest offer. The sticking points apparently concern free agency--players’ ability to sell their services to the highest bidder--and the players’ insistence that they continue to keep most of the money from sales of hockey cards, which bring them about $11 million a year.

“If the players reject this, the season will be canceled,” NHL President John A. Ziegler Jr. said just before the union’s action.

Hockey expert Rob Beamish, a sociology professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, says the real issue is the unwillingness of certain paternalistic owners to tolerate a feisty union.

“(Those) owners want to, if not dismantle the union, at least weaken it,” Bemish said. He called the attitude a throwback to the days when the NHL was “really just a hobby league for a small number of autocrats.”

The NHL, like other leagues, has owners that range from individual entrepreneurs such as Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McNall to such large corporations as brewer Molson Cos. (Montreal Canadiens) and entertainment conglomerate Paramount Communications (New York Rangers). In 25 years, the league has expanded from six teams to 22--including 15 in the United States--but it has not shaken its image as a sports backwater.

Oppenheim, who represents numerous NHL players, says that the union’s very weakness kept hockey from moving into the future and confronting problems with which the other leagues were wrestling.

The NBA, because it was in the most trouble, took the most radical steps. Under Commissioner David Stern, who took office in 1984, the NBA adopted a system that caps the growth of player salaries but guarantees players 53% of league revenues. The arrangement satisfied players and left Stern free to concentrate on marketing the league, which he has done with stunning success.

League revenues have exploded from $260 million in the 1986-87 season to more than $700 million now, and that doesn’t include the $1.1 billion the NBA rakes in from licensed products.

By comparison, NFL and big-league baseball owners have been less progressive. Still, the NFL, recognizing that disparities in local TV rights could cause small-market teams to fail, adopted a plan to pool all TV money and divide it equally. Baseball, for its part, dealt earlier than the other leagues with free agency and arbitration--even if it did so at the point of a lawsuit.

With hockey’s popularity as a participation sport largely confined to the Northeast and Canada, it may never gain the kind of broad following that the other sports have, but the NHL’s efforts to promote the sport have been questionable.

In 1988, the league abandoned ESPN, the national cable sports network, in favor of a more lucrative offer--$17 million a season--from SportsChannel America. But SportsChannel, a premium cable service, reaches far fewer homes.

Meanwhile, baseball, football and basketball all moved forward with hundred-million-dollar national contracts that brought their events to larger audiences than ever.

When SportsChannel’s three-year deal expired at the end of last season, the best the NHL could do was a one-year renewal with SportsChannel, at $5.5 million--$2.5 million less than ESPN was paying in 1988.

“That was very short-term thinking,” said Bob Woolf, a Boston lawyer who represents athletes in all the major sports. “This could be a national sport.”

The Trouble With Hockey Professional hockey lags the other major sports in popularity in large part because its traditional fans are concentrated in Canada and the Northeast. However, critics say the National Hockey League has problems of its own making:

Marketing: Aside from the phenomenal success of the San Jose Sharks’ team merchandise, the NHL has not matched other leagues in promoting itself. The lack of national TV exposure in the United States is considered an example of this failure.

Player relations: The current strike, coming as it does on the brink of the Stanley Cup playoffs, may take hockey away from its peak potential audience. The players union must share responsibility, but critics say NHL management has failed to deal with issues such as free agency and arbitration. Other sports impede players’ ability to move from team to team, but the NHL’s free-agency rules are considered the most restrictive.

Management structure: Although the team owners have the final say in all pro leagues, NHL President John A. Ziegler Jr. has less power than his counterparts in other sports, which some say restricts his ability to creatively solve problems.

Attendance: Without a big national TV contract, hockey must rely on the fans in the seats for the lion’s share of its revenue, but the NHL has trailed the other leagues in attendance growth.

Five-year growth in attendance per game: National Basketball Assn.: +19.2% National Football League: +13.8% Major League Baseball: +9.3% National Hockey League: +4.1% Source: The leagues