NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman was the guest on ESPN2's
"The Mike Lupica Show" yesterday. Bettman said he uses
attendance, ratings, media exposure and sponsorships and
licensing to measure the health of the league. Bettman:
"Retail licensing, particularly for sports and logoed
merchandise, has been soft and declining. Ours has been
increasing double digits for the last five years and will
again this year. ... And our sponsorship dollars, money
spent on advertising on our game, money spent on promoting
the game ... that's up in the last four years from $20
million to over $200 million." Bettman, when asked whether
the NHL suffers from a lack of star power: "Our guys are the
most approachable. They're really the best to deal with,
and we have a lot of star players." On the league's TV
ratings: "We don't need to have big-time ratings. We don't
need Super Bowl ratings. We don't even need to do NBA
Finals ratings or World Series ratings. What we need to do
is make sure that there is enough of a fan base. ... We have
the youngest viewing audience on average than any other
major sports league. And what we're doing is we're trying
to build a viewing pattern so people watch us on network
television." Bettman, on the perception that hockey is
better live than on TV: "Part of that's a bad rap. You can
watch the game on television just fine. ... But the fact is
the game is so much more exciting in person than any other
sport [and] that degree of excitement has yet to translate
[to TV]. But again, that's a function of not having
networks invest the time and the money to try and bring more
of the excitement home on television, to find new ways to
televise it. Fox and ESPN have, as of late, started doing
that. ... But it's a growing process. Television viewing
patterns don't change overnight" (ESPN2, 6/22).
NOT A FAN: In Baltimore, Milton Kent wonders, "How did
ESPN2 find a New York studio large enough for newspaper
columnist Mike Lupica, his self-indulgent questions, his ego
and his guest for the eponymous snore of a talk show of
which he is the host?" (Baltimore SUN, 6/23).
