by Jeff Johns

Created on: March 02, 2010

With the excitement created by the Olympic Gold Medal match up between Team USA and Team Canada, the NHL was presented with one of the greatest promotional opportunities in the history of organized sports. The game showcased to a national audience the greatest players the two nations had to offer and every one of them was a member of an NHL team.

It's the kind of free advertising the sports marketer can only dream of; an Olympic caliber infomercial for your product beamed into the homes of a huge audience. Here's the rub; how does the NHL capitalize on this exposure for their product and convert it into new fans for their sport? The simple answer is that they can't.

Of the so-called “major sports” hockey lags behind the popularity of the NFL, MLB and NBA. It also likely falls short of the audience for NASCAR, UFC and maybe even the World Series of Poker.

The reasons most often sited for hockey being less popular than other sports go something like this; “it's too hard to follow the puck” or “I don't understand the rules and what's going” or my favorite, “I can't see what the players look like under those helmets and face masks.”

In reality there are two reasons why hockey falls down the popularity scale; the lack of a real network television presence and a lack of team identity.

Television Deal

Currently the NHL has a couple of minor television deals in place. First is a 54 game package of regular season contests on the VERSUS Network. The VERSUS deal also includes playoff and Stanley Cup games split with NBC Sports. NBC Sports carries a mid-season game of the week on weekend afternoons.

The rest of the leagues television presence falls to local team broadcast deals with local or regional sports outlets, which makes it impossible for a potential fan living in an outlying market to develop a kinship to a given team. It's a tough sell of the NHL to get potential fans to shell out cash for a pay-per-view package like NHL Center Ice, when the fan in question isn't even sure they like the sport.

Team Identity

While it goes hand-in-hand with the lack of a national television deal, the real issue facing the NHL when it comes to a shortfall in popularity is the lack of team identity. In hockey crazy cities like Buffalo and Detroit, it's hard to walk down the street without running into someone sporting Sabres or Red Wings gear, but in market away from those NHL hot beds, the league is hard pressed to draw new fans to

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