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Old 04-08-2013, 05:11 AM   #24
Itse
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There's still the same problems as always.

The time difference already makes all North American leagues marginal in Europe, and that will never change. TV is where the money is at, and sports needs to be watched live.

Then there's the KHL. They would never join this project, because their goal is to become the European competitor to the NHL. And that's where the best money is in Europe, and best players.

And still most western Europeans can barely name a team in the KHL. Which brings us to the third major problem. Sports organizations in Europe often have a decades long tradition, many date their roots back more than a hundred years. For an example from Finland, Espoo Blues has constant trouble attracting people to the rink, even though they've had success, even though they have a good youth program, even though they have a nice arena and even though they play the other traditional Finnish teams.

You're not going to get people to take time away from their teams to watch a new team in a new league. Most sports fans already watch as many teams as they can fill on their schedule, and are just not interested in new ones.

Then there's also all the language barriers.

And in the end, if for example it ever came to be that the KHL and the NHL started to put so much pressure to the western European national leagues that they would want to band together to form a new paneuropean league, there's very little in it for them to make it NHL Europe. They'd be better off just forming they're own league to run as they please without North American meddling.
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