The NHL is doing a massive, passive-aggressive push to blame the NHLPA over the on-ice violence it refuses to address out of fear of alienating the #pleaselikemysport crowd.
It's worth noting that in polling, it's always plus or minus three percent, 19 times out of 20. Therefore, those political differences between three of the four major sports are very small, and in fact fall within the margin of error. I would argue that the most noteworthy numbers are those of the NBA - they are clearly different from the other three, although again they aren't as wildly different as one might have first thought.
I was not sure about going there. But there is a definitely an intersect between the suburbs and the centrist swing voters. It's not a hard alignment, and I hope it did not come off that way. Either way, the NHL's southern strategy has always been about offering a sport to people put off by the NBA and NFL for 'reasons.'
Hard to know for sure. Two points is margin of error in polling, but in the marketing world a two point swing in market share is huge. You hear a lot of complaining and sabre ratting about "woke culture" in sports, people allegedly walking away because of it, etc. (I'm skeptical - what else are they going to watch?) I'd love to see some actual market research to see where sports viewers/ticket buyers are going and not going. It matters because advertisers find that in a fragmented viewing world, sports is the one place where they can be certain of a consistent, predictable audience.
True. I come back to the 10-per-cent decline in football participation. That's swung over to hockey, which means the NHL sees opportunity to convert some of that middle class who did not grow up with hockey.
It's worth noting that in polling, it's always plus or minus three percent, 19 times out of 20. Therefore, those political differences between three of the four major sports are very small, and in fact fall within the margin of error. I would argue that the most noteworthy numbers are those of the NBA - they are clearly different from the other three, although again they aren't as wildly different as one might have first thought.
I was not sure about going there. But there is a definitely an intersect between the suburbs and the centrist swing voters. It's not a hard alignment, and I hope it did not come off that way. Either way, the NHL's southern strategy has always been about offering a sport to people put off by the NBA and NFL for 'reasons.'
Hard to know for sure. Two points is margin of error in polling, but in the marketing world a two point swing in market share is huge. You hear a lot of complaining and sabre ratting about "woke culture" in sports, people allegedly walking away because of it, etc. (I'm skeptical - what else are they going to watch?) I'd love to see some actual market research to see where sports viewers/ticket buyers are going and not going. It matters because advertisers find that in a fragmented viewing world, sports is the one place where they can be certain of a consistent, predictable audience.
True. I come back to the 10-per-cent decline in football participation. That's swung over to hockey, which means the NHL sees opportunity to convert some of that middle class who did not grow up with hockey.