NHL Goes Interactive, and Social
For those who don’t know me from Adam, I’m a bit of a hockey fanatic. Over the past few years, it’s been exciting to see the National Hockey League undergo some pretty significant changes and growth, especially in the wake of the heartbreaking loss of the ‘04-05 season due to a labor dispute. I recently had an interesting conversation with old friend/colleague Mike Dilorenzo, who works in the NHL communications deptartment, and discussed some things the league is working on as they prepare for the ‘08-09 campaign.
The NHL is in a unique situation among the major team sports. On one hand it has perhaps the most loyal and energetic fan base of any sport; the league played to over 93% capacity last season despite very high ticket prices, and more than 260 million watched their hometown teams on local TV. However, hockey remains a largely regionalized sport that has failed to capture the imagination of the casual American sports fan.
Another huge factor the league faces is the displacement of a large percentage of its fans. According to Dilorenzo, between 40-60% of a given team’s fans no longer live in the market their team plays. “For example, Hartford Whalers fans living in San Francisco,” Mike says, a little dig at yours truly. “If we are only reaching the fans on a local level, we are missing out on half the audience. So it’s important to take a more national approach where the league is the overarching brand and we are building off the local passion we have.”
The league has a very deliberate strategy to increase exposure and revenues that is focused on getting their loyal fans to interact more with its various properties and products, especially those on the web. “We’re focused on building incremental behavior off of the behavior that’s already shown to be quite strong,” says Dilorenzo, a former prep hockey player and high school coach. The league is developing new platforms and refreshing or enhancing old ones, such as last season’s launch of the NHL Network in the U.S., a 24/7 cable television network that now reaches 80 million households and broadcasts a nightly wrap-up show during the season, documentaries and classic games.
The wrap-up show was desperately needed in my opinion; coming out of the lockout the league switched from ESPN as its primary TV rights holder to upstart Versus (then known as Outdoor Life Network/OLN). While Versus has gradually improved its exposure and broadcast quality, one huge negative impact was a loss of attention from the world’s top sports media property (remember NHL2night?), especially from its flagship SportsCenter program. Despite outrageous claims by ESPN to the contrary, SportsCenter has sadly evolved into a marketing vehicle for its (and its sister networks) other content. In the last few years, the amount of time spent on NHL highlights and news has fallen drastically, while exposure for its newer properties such as the NFL, NBA and NASCAR has skyrocketed. Hmmm, very curious. In any case, the NHL is looking to provide direct access to its fans and ratchet up the engagement through its own network where it has control over content and distribution. Smart move: hockey goals, saves and hits provide some of the most exciting highlight footage and I really missed seeing it on SportsCenter.
NHL.com is also in the midst of a significant overhaul that will be launched in conjunction with the upcoming season. Two specific programs are the launch of what Dilorenzo calls “the Holy Grail of fantasy games,” as well as some significantly expanded social networking features that will make it easier for fans to interact with each other and enable popular content to bubble up to the surface. A new live streaming game product will also be unveiled.
Ok, so what’s the NHL trying to do to win over new fans – a constant challenge given the fact that hockey is just not ingrained into most Americans lives, which makes it difficult to follow the flow of play (esp on TV) and appreciate the incredible athleticism required to excel at the game? The main approach is to develop new programs such as the immensely successful New Year’s Day Winter Classic (v2 of which will take place at Wrigley Field between the Hawks and Wings), and a first-of-its-kind kick-off event to take place in a to-be-named Original Six city this fall when the season opens.
“As we build out additional products, there is a novelty factor that we think can also pull in casual or new fans,” says Dilorenzo. “We also want to develop more pervasiveness with our messages, online through all of our inventory, through broadcast rights holders, and also through corporate marketing sponsors.” One example to look for is a national hockey-themed crossover promotion from Bud Light, one of the league’s top sponsors (hopefully this does not include that new lime-infused “beer”).
Of course as with virtually any modern business these days, technology is at the heart of the NHL’s growth strategy. The league has deployed an industrial strength customer/fan database, analytics from Omniture and commerce capabilities from GSI Commerce to become much smarter about how to engage with its fans and create those always-elusive one-to-one relationships.
Says Dilorenzo, “One of the most important things we’ve done is the formation of NHL Direct [the direct marketing group] and the creation of our relational database under one roof. Our fan database grew by 30% last year, and the quality of the information is also growing. More people are giving us their email, postal address, favorite team. Even for casual fans when we can get that from them and apply some analytics then we can serve them more relevant messaging.”
The NHL sure has come a long way since the pre-Gary Bettman era when marketing meant throwing free pucks in the stands after the pre-game skate.
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Comments (2 Responses)
Interesting article.
With the loss of the Whalers The interest in the NHL was greatly depleated in the Hartford area.-Yours truly included.
Joe
Posted on August 13th, 2008 at 9:59 am.
The NHL could go a lot further if they got rid of Gary Bettman!!!
http://www.FireBettman.com