Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay Random
Bettman had nothing to do with that. Until the early 1990s, national TV revenue in each country was divided among that country's teams. Then, with visions of a multi-billion-dollar U.S. TV deal dancing in their heads, the Canadian owners themselves agreed to abolish their separate revenue pool and share both national contracts equally among all teams. The fools thought they would gain more from the U.S. deal than they would lose from the Canadian one.
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That was really a critical error on the Canadian owners part. There was never going to be a big US national TV deal and they should have seen that. The ratings on a national level were never going to be there.
The problem though that I have with Bettman, is that he positioned the NHL in all of these large media markets in hopes of chasing down that big national deal. He lucked out in that the regional sports cable channel market started taking off shortly after, and these franchises were able to cash in on their large media markets in this way and bring a lot of revenue to the league.
His problem is that he is doing nothing to prepare for the collapse of the cable bundle, and is going to be left with a mess sooner than later.