Originally Posted by bobbylouie
My post will only address the general level of interest in the U.S., not why the numbers continue to drop.
As a member of an extremely elderly demographic and as a person based in a large U.S. city with an NHL team, I think Canadian fans have a skewed view of how much interest there is in the NHL in the USA. I suppose that's natural if your sense of it is based on watching games on TV and seeing mostly full arenas with what appear to be rabid fans in the U.S. home rinks.
The reality is that for 99% of the U.S. population, the NHL doesn't even exist.
Sports interest generally breaks down into 3 categories: Hardcore fans, general sports fans and non-sports fans. If you take the NFL as an example, the hardcore fans schedule their entire weekend around games, even in cases where the home team isn't participating. General fans have less rabid interest but are still very much aware of league happenings, players, etc. But even the far larger non-sports population have some awareness of who the local team is, the names of the star players, the fact that the game is on TV on a certain day, how traffic in the area might be affected, etc. They might even follow what happens in a given game just to be part of the conversation the next day to feel included.
For hockey in the U.S., hardcore fans essentially make up the entire fan base in most cities. Beyond that, casual sports fans think of the NHL as a joke ("wait, you get credit for half a win even when you lose, that can't be serious!!!"), and the general population (the vast, vast majority) have ZERO knowledge or interest.
With that, it's almost impossible to get any kind of impressive TV numbers, and as a person said earlier in this thread, it's not much more than what you'd get if you accidentally left the TV on that channel earlier in the day.
I also think there is a flaw in the logic that says "listen to what your fans are now saying". People that are still fans probably think the product is fine and survey responses you get from them are going to be skewed. You should have been listening to fans who were dissatisfied before and have already left, or try to identify those people now and see what caused them to lose interest. Somebody like an old fart like me (who worked for the league at one time) and now sees it as a joke with a crap product.
It's probably too late to get us back but I don't think you're going to learn much by only asking people who are still fans.
|