Women's professional hockey - will it ever work?

[Samonadreau]

Originally Posted by soulchoice

The difference is in 1979 that one League had the best hockey players in North America. Quality and talent wise there was no better alternative to put your dollars to.

Ya but the NHL quality markets were all merged into one league. Its about having the most viable markets (and talent obviously) in one league.

[N-E-B]

Here’s my take: I feel awful for these women that they can’t play it professionally like the men can, but at the same time I can’t say that I would support a team here. I didn’t attended a single Inferno game and the reason for that is the same reason I have never and will never attend a Calgary Canucks game: simply put, there’s just better options out there. If I want to watch hockey on a budget I will go to a Hitmen game. The product is better and you have the added bonus of watching prospects and future stars.

To me, it has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with the quality of hockey already available in Calgary.

The WNBA is a black hole (about $10mil/year in losses according to Adam Silver) and I honestly think the only reason the NBA hasn’t shut it down is because it would be a PR disaster for them to do so. I don’t blame the NHL for wanting to avoid getting sucked into something like that. I certainly wouldn’t invest in a league that was almost guaranteed to bleed money.

[WhiteTiger]

I've been to an Inferno game, not too long before they got shut down.

The ticket was a gift, and I did enjoy the game.

But I'd not pay more than $5-10/ticket for the experience, personally. And I'd have to be bored, willing to blow 3 hours or so on average hockey. I can't really see this taking off anytime soon.

[CaptainCrunch]

On average the WNBA has lost nearly a quarter of a billion dollars since it started according to reports with the losses last year growing to 12 million dollars a year. I can't see the NHL having any interest in a scenario like that with woman's hockey at all. Like I mentioned before even a 10 team circuit with a 23 person team making 30k each would add up quickly to large losses.

The WNBA has an average salary of $79,000 and 12 teams. The WNBA also has an average attendance of about 7000 and their teams are in major media cities.

I doubt that a woman's pro team in a canadian city is going to surpass 1000 fans just because of the competition with other leagues and teams.

The height of woman's hockey support is during the Olympics every 4 years, other then that it just doesn't sell. On top of that, to be honest, outside of the US and Canada, in the Olympics its not super competitive.

My Cousin's daughter signed up to play for the U of L this year, she played hockey on boys teams and then when she hit midget level or whatever they call it now, she went off to play on a Woman's developmental team, and then went to university, when I talk to her she didn't get into hockey because woman played it, she got into hockey because she watched hockey with her dad, and he coached youth hockey and encouraged her as a girl to play in a boys league. She does have aspirations to try to play for the Olympics, but she didn't have any interest in the Infernal or the other pro woman teams. I know a lot of woman and girls who love hockey and have played hockey, but except for every 4 years, their desire to play wasn't driven by woman pro teams.

I agree with one of the posters, the pro game just isn't going to pay, I doubt the NHL would ever be interested in being the primary financer of it because they don't want to look at their investment 10 years down the road and see that its hit 9 figures. Plus the woman players forming a Players Association just ensures that the NHL won't be riding to the rescue.

First of all because someday, the NHL might make the decision to shut it down and the backlash would be huge, not because its a popular league that they're killing, but because of optics and because it will come across as a slap to woman and woman's hockey, at least that's how it will be portrayed

Second of all, the last thing that the NHL wants to do is suddenly have to be involved in another player association that makes demands for more money and higher salaries. I think they'd rather pass.

I honestly think that the focus should be on college teams and helping with getting educational opportunities, or because I don't think there are enough players to form a strong competitive junior circuit, You push a Olympic developmental team that has 40 players and tours, and sponsors help pay the way.

I just don't see a pro team with a living wage as viable. I'd love to see something that would prove me wrong, but I don't see it.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by soulchoice

No it won't ever work. The NHL has no responsibility to fund a league which will be a losing financial business.

The part about being the elite in their sport, thus should be paid a liveable wage is nonsensical and illogical. The top players in sledge hockey are the elite in their sport too, so does that mean they should also get a league and a liveable wage?

I cherry picked parts of your post, so my apologies in advance.

Heres the thing...its not like professional leagues popped out of a Cracker-Jack box as a fully formed, fleshed out and shiny final product.

You dont have to look too far back in the history of most, if not all, established professional sports leagues to see how they got started and the conditions involved in that.

The players at the moment are saying that they are professional athletes and deserve to be paid as such.

Well...'deserve' is a strong word.

But furthermore, look at the beginnings of the NHL and....it was borderline slavery.

I mean, the Habs had a form of of 'Right of First Refusal' to players just because they were French.

Long hours, physically demanding, punishing work for pay that, lets be honest, calling it 'semi-pro' would be generous, 'amateur' is likely closer to accurate and going down from there.

Despite the fact that they genuinely were the best players of the sport at the time.

What we're seeing here with the Women's game is an unwillingness to accept that. They really want to skip that grass-roots step that was fundamental in creating an interest and a paying fan base.

And as thats the case then the answer, sadly, is 'No.' It wont work.

[Da_Chief]

Originally Posted by WhiteTiger

I've been to an Inferno game, not too long before they got shut down.

The ticket was a gift, and I did enjoy the game.

But I'd not pay more than $5-10/ticket for for the experience, personally. And I'd have to be bored, willing to blow 3 hours or so on average hockey. I can't really see this taking off anytime soon.

The 3 hours is a key imo. Even watching Flames games at home I'm usually working on something else. 3 hours is just way too long for women's hockey. An hour max including intermissions.

10 minute periods, 5 minute intermission, done in 45 minutes. If they get some TV deal, add in few minutes of commercials and and you're in and out of there in under an hour. Play 4 on 4 or even 3 on 3. Make it exciting.

But besides all that you basically need the NHL to say we will lose money to give them an opportunity.

4 Team league. You'd better off putting it in North Central USA. Where you don't have much other competition besides NCAA. All close to each other.

North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa. All bus rides would be 8 hours or less depending on which city you put the team in.

Start in January, have a 3 month long season, 16 games. No playoffs. See how it goes.

[CaptainCrunch]

I could see where the NHL would probably rather just sponsor them for equipment and maybe help them get in the door with sponsors, but I just can't see an interest in anything further then that.

[flamesrule_kipper34]

Not sure how this will work; and the parallel to the WNBA is really not a good one.

1. The WNBA loses a ton of money.
2. Basketball is a MUCH larger market than hockey and if a pro-league for women's in basketball is a tough sell then what hope is there for hockey?

I just don't see how it's economically viable.

[Scorch]

You can look no further than this forum as an example. CP is a local hockey focused message board and we had the Calgary Inferno, which won the Clarkson Cup yet not a single soul here posted about it. Women’s sports in general haven’t drawn nearly the same interest as men’s sports, (and understandably so when men play faster, harder and more skilled) there is one genre that comes to mind where women has come close to the men in terms of interest...Women’s Wrestling.

Why has it grown as much in popularity as it has now? They shared the same program and platform as the men’s. For the past few decades, women’s wrestling has shared the same viewership and exposure as the men’s as it aired on RAW and Smackdown

So here’s my proposal to generate a jump in fan interest...

Women’s hockey, much like GLOW for women’s wrestling, won’t draw as a program on its own. So try turning it into intermission hockey. Partner up with the CHL and play 7-8 minute periods during Junior hockey intermission with the last period played after the junior game. By doing this, you get the larger crowd, and better engagement

Actual CHL Intermission breaks may need to extend by 5-10 minutes, no increases to ticket pricing, CHL teams still keeps all concessions sales but the women get to keep 100% of their own merch sales. Sell TV rights to TSN for pennies so they can play a taped version on the each Sunday evening.

Sure, it sucks to have to drastically cut their play time by 66%, but when the masses aren’t interested in your game, you have to change your game for the masses.

[Itse]

If you think of WNBA as part of the NBA marketing, $10M per year is a lot, but it isn't THAT much. It's also a unique kind of marketing that probably draws in people they otherwise don't reach. Best use of money? Unlikely, but it wouldn't surprise me if the NBA is okay with the way things are.

I don't see women's hockey being commercially viable as a gate driven league, but I don't think it's impossible that hockey marketing + sports brands wanting to sell girls expensive hockey gear could support a small league. Not right now, but maybe at some point in time.

Big maybe though.

You'd probably have to brand the women's teams the same as the NHL teams, like they do in Europe. In Helsinki HIFK just started their own women's team with the same name and logo. No off-brand lower-tier naming like Inferno, the womens team is HIFK just like the men's team. This is also how they name the junior teams, so you can literally play for just one team all your life.

I always felt that makes a lot of marketing sense.

[Red_Baron]

I just read an article about the wage gap between the NBA and the WNBA.
The article focused on the WNBA only paying 20% of its revenue in salaries vs the NBA paying 50%. In that article, they neglected to mention or factor in operating costs whatsoever. You need to pay for people to run the day to day operations, you need to pay the arena staff, you need to pay for travel-and the costs associated with that are not proportionately less than for an NBA game. It doesn't take a degree in economics to determine that using the percentage of revenue is not an apples to apples comparison of the financial health of the two leagues. The article then goes on to accuse the owners of lying about the financial state of the teams and even suggested that with all the money that the owner of the NY Liberty makes from the Rangers and the Knicks that he should be happy that he gets a tax write-off by owning the liberty.

No wonder the NHL doesn't want to get involved with a women's league.

[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.

[CaptainCrunch]

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.

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.

[Geeoff]

I think that women's sports work better in situations where they can be presented as equal to but different than the men. Where you can show them on the same broadcast and present them at the same level. Figure Skating, tennis, UFC, these have the advantage of promoting female athletes due to their format.

[Dube]

They better be paid the same

[Vansmack]

Originally Posted by WhiteTiger

I've been to an Inferno game, not too long before they got shut down.

The ticket was a gift, and I did enjoy the game.

But I'd not pay more than $5-10/ticket for the experience, personally. And I'd have to be bored, willing to blow 3 hours or so on average hockey. I can't really see this taking off anytime soon.

In all honesty, you can go watch a Heritage League games for free. For a beer league, the quality of hockey is quite good

[WhiteTiger]

Originally Posted by Vansmack

In all honesty, you can go watch a Heritage League games for free. For a beer league, the quality of hockey is quite good

Well, part of this is that I don't mind paying for and supporting things that I enjoy. But there is a limit to that, too. Hence me saying that I felt the Inferno game would be worth about $5-10/ticket, especially as I'm investing a large chunk of time into it.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by Geeoff

I think that women's sports work better in situations where they can be presented as equal to but different than the men. Where you can show them on the same broadcast and present them at the same level. Figure Skating, tennis, UFC, these have the advantage of promoting female athletes due to their format.

Golf, curling as well.

Volleyball too, the kind with two players on sand.

[powderjunkie]

Bit of a wacky idea, but I think one way it could be more marketable is if it as co-ed with NHL legends. A ton of hurdles to make it work, but I could imagine a 4-8 team limited date travelling roadshow league. I would imagine it can be hard for a lot of NHL alumni to find good beer leagues that scratch their competitive itch without being full of Jr B d-bags going nuts on them.

[flames_fan_down_under]

I like the idea of women having a thriving pro league where they could make a decent wage and do what they love. But I doubt that I would ever actually go to a game simply because it's not that fun to watch.