Quote:
Originally Posted by FireGilbert
The Australian AFLW is the model to follow. I’m not a fan of Aussie rules and find the women’s game unwatchable but they’ve had huge crowds including over 50k in last years final. It is run by the AFL with associated teams playing a shortened season before the men. They were also willing to take a loss for a couple years giving tickets and TV rights away for free. It still has a way to go for long term viability but they are off to a good start.
For a proposed NHLW you could start with 8 teams, half in the US and half in Canada, playing a 20 game season in September and October. From here slowly grow the league, increasing teams, games, and salaries as sustainable.
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There's no track record of support though for the NHL to even get excited about. the games are poorly attended and the TV ratings for the televised games in the playoffs just weren't watched.
The only time it gets any kind of traction is during the Olympics, but that's more that people just tend to watch Olympic events and feel that nationalist fever enough to care. It doesn't translate to a pro league.
Its more then just costs for the salaries, and like I said even if the "living wage" was like 30,000 a year. You're starting point for a 10 team circuit is almost 7 million. Then asking the NHL to broker a TV deal that they're on the hook for if advertising sales are poor, helping with admin and hard costs, you're looking at brooking at pretty big loss for the first two years for a game that really doesn't even have great grassroot support.
The optics are terrible for the NHL to take a huge stake in this. Lets say it does fail in 2 years and Bettman comes out and says that they're killing the league. You'll get a vicious blowback in terms of things like "Male dominate sport hates woman", "you should be willing to take bigger losses because any season now this thing could get support", or "Of course they shut it down, they're men and men don't like woman playing hockey professionally"
On top of that the first time the NHL takes a meeting and you have a player's union showing up, without an established league in place, the NHL walks away, they don't want that fight on another front.
I don't see the NHL being willing to take on a large loss for an experiment for a league that really can't stand on its own.