NHL must learn to play to its TV market

The Frozen Four, the NCAA finals for Division I college hockey, is being played in Columbus, Ohio, this week. The finals are tonight, and they are about the present and future of sports.

North Dakota and Denver will play for the championship. For the first time in the 58-year history of the tournament, all four of the teams involved, Colorado College and Minnesota being the two that lost semifinal games, come from the same conference, the WCHA.

The rink on the Ohio State University campus is a sellout, with some 14,000 seats, for all three games. Representatives from other cities, including Tampa Bay, are on hand seeking to bring the Frozen Four to their locale years down the road.

The NHL, in the throes of a lockout that cost it this past season, can learn from what is transpiring here.

Television dominates sports today. The money in rights fees has propelled all major sports, professional and college. That is not about to change.

College hockey, as limited a draw as it is for fans nationally, has an audience. Like the basketball Final Four, it draws fans from around the country even if their favorite team is not involved.

Television, with the ever-multiplying number of channels, becomes a more segmented market for sports with each passing day.

ESPN, for whom I cover events, has launched ESPNU, dedicated to college sports of all kinds. They compete with the College Sports Network, a business ESPN tried to buy out before airing ESPNU, and many regional networks.

The competition is fierce for college sports, however minor they may be viewed by the general viewing public.

We are in the age of niche marketing for everything. That means if there is a market for the product, even if small, there is probably a way to make money off the events if packaged properly.

Advertisers can buy time on multiple telecasts of different sports, affording them the chance to reach viewers passionately devoted to sports once thought “minor” in the grand scheme of appeal.

College hockey’s lesson for the NHL is take what you have, provide the best presentation of the product you can, and be happy with a business that can make money being what it is.

College basketball and football did that long ago. Other college sports are doing so now, including college baseball that is about to receive more national coverage than ever before.

If such packaging can work for these college sports, surely it can work for the NHL.

Once that league stops trying to be Major League Baseball or the NFL and packages its games for a significant niche audience, the NHL will find a very lucrative market and a far less contentious life.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and ABC sportscaster.