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Hockey Fans Well-Wired
by Alanah McGinley on 10/02/07 at 12:25 PM ET
Comments (3)
Since everyone reading these words is either reading them on this blog or via some rss feedreader, the audience here might be a bit biased in believing hockey fans are very tech-knowledgeable. But in this instance, your bias is absolutely correct—NHL hockey fans are indeed very well-wired.
From the Sports Business Journal on Monday, October 1 (sorry, no link. subscription only):
The NHL has long asserted that its fans are the most tech-savvy in sports. Exclusive data provided to Sports Business Journal by Scarborough Sports Marketing seems to support that belief. Twenty-four percent of NHL loyal fans live in households that own an HDTV and more than seventy percent have a broadband connection (cable or dsl) at home.
See the graph below.
There are many implications to this, obviously. For one, how the NHL itself markets the game and reaches its fans, and certainly they’ve gotten fairly aggressive in recent years in the online forum, both in YouTube and Google video distribution, and their control of team websites and content (explored in part yesterday, in reference to the MSG lawsuit).
And the other angle to this is advertising—something like HDTV ownership being most obvious in the graphic above. The percentage of hockey fans who fork out money for that pricey technology is about 40% higher than the U.S. population on average.
Advertisers in the tech world should be taking the dollars of hockey fans very, very seriously.
Filed in: NHL Talk, NHL Business of Hockey, Hockey Related Stories | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: media, merchandising,
Comments
Other than perhaps NASCAR, the margins over the other sports aren’t exactly dramatic. And depending on how the data was gathered, they may even be statistically insignificant.
And there’s no escaping that a miniscule percentage advantage is of dubious value when it’s saddled with a gargantuan disadvantage in raw population.
Sure, it’s interesting. But to take this as some harbinger of a sea change in the way advertisers view the NHL is a bit nutty IMHO.
Posted by shep from california on 10/02/07 at 12:40 PM ET
I wonder how much of it is desperation--I mean, if the only way you can get access to your team is broadband, then you will cut other areas of your budget to pay for it.
Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 10/02/07 at 01:03 PM ET
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This is perhaps evidence to the further assertion that hockey fans, though forming the smallest fanbase in terms of population, have the most dispensible income per capita than any other sports fan base.
This is the strength of the league and ought to be marketed towards - in terms of both tech-savvy and available dollars.
Posted by underthechestnuttree from LaSalle, Ontario, Canada on 10/02/07 at 11:34 AM ET