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Entries with the tag: marketing

Everyone’s a Winner in Hockey

by Alanah McGinley on 10/24/08 at 12:58 PM ET
Comments (4)

From Chris Sprow at ESPN The Magazine,

Last year, the Toronto Maple Leafs were a fairly dreadful team by most standards. They were last place in their division, had the fourth worst record in the East, were outscored by 29 goals and were an atrocious 78.2% on the penalty kill. Their record, however, was a competitive-looking 36-35-11. They were over .500!

But in the current NHL, who isn’t?

Last year, in a 30-team league, just 6 teams were under .500. In the West, discounting the NHL’s worst team—the Los Angeles Kings who were all of 9 games under .500— the other two “losers” combined to go a whopping 5 games under .500. Yikes! That’s because the NHL has devised a clever marketing ploy where at least based on a traditional look at the standings, your team is never really out of it.

read on

Filed in: NHL Talk, NHL Business of Hockey | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: marketing,

Europe is Worth it to the NHL

by Alanah McGinley on 10/16/08 at 02:15 PM ET
Comments (1)

From Mark Herrmann at Newsday:

[The New York Rangers] trip seems to have more than compensated in team chemistry what it had cost in practice time during a rushed training camp. That’s more tangible than the cool million dollars they earned by beating Metallurg Magnitogorsk for the preseason Victoria Cup in Switzerland.

American professional leagues do not release figures on exactly how much real compensation they receive for these trips, but the fact that they keep doing it tells you it is worth their while.

“Playing overseas is a marketing investment—for the league and the team,” said Stefan Szymanski, professor of economics and head of the MBA program at Cass Business School in London. “The long-term benefit is that the league will develop a new fan base.”

read on

Filed in: NHL Teams, New York Rangers, NHL Talk, NHL Business of Hockey | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: europe, marketing,

Sports Marketing Double-Take

by Alanah McGinley on 10/14/08 at 07:01 PM ET
Comments (4)

From Darren Rovell at CNBC’s SportsBiz:

A blog reader writes in today to tell us how similar the “NHL Face Off 2008” logo was to this year’s “NFL Kickoff 2008” logo.

It’s kind of ridiculous how similar they look. Have we really run out of logos? I know no idea is really original, but I hope the person who put this one together at the NHL didn’t get any sort of credit for it.

Rovell is apparently suggesting the NHL’s work is a knock-off of the NFL’s earlier logo. I’ll leave it to readers to decide, but he might have a point…

Filed in: NHL Talk, NHL Business of Hockey | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: marketing, nfl, nhl,

Marketing to Sports Fans

by Alanah McGinley on 07/11/08 at 05:48 PM ET
Comments (1)

From Forbes:

Which companies get the most bang for their buck advertising through the NBA or NHL? The answer, according to a study by Baylor University and iThink: beer, insurance and office supply businesses. We awarded NBA and NHL point totals to indicate how much “lift” a brand gets in distinction, loyalty and purchase behavior from sports fans over and above non-sports fans. [...]

Here are the top 10, with NBA scores weighted 3.5 times more heavily than NHL scores to reflect its superior reach.

Here are the Top-10 most effective sports advertisers. (NHL fans like beer. A lot. Go figure. They also seem especially fond of office supplies...).

And Tom Van Riper has written a complete story on the subject here.

Filed in: NHL Talk, NHL Business of Hockey | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: hockey+fans, marketing,

Flashy Footwear

by Alanah McGinley on 06/13/08 at 10:01 AM ET
Comments (1)

From Chris Reidy at the Boston Globe:

Moth-ball those wing-tips, hockey buffs. Give those pumps and penny loafers a night off. As of now, you can purchase customized footwear that celebrates the Detroit Red Wings’ recent Stanley Cup victory.

That’s the good word from Reebok International Ltd., the Canton sneaker brand that is the “authentic outfitter” of the National Hockey League.

And that means customized Red Wings Stanley Cup footwear. Fortunately you can put other NHL logos on your feet, too.

Photo below:

Filed in: NHL Teams, Detroit Red Wings | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: marketing, rbk,

Beer and Hockey

by Alanah McGinley on 06/04/08 at 01:53 PM ET
Comments (2)

From AdWeek:

Anheuser-Busch said today it has signed a deal with the National Hockey League that enables Bud Light to remain the “Official beer of the NHL” through the 2010-11 season. Bud Light has held that distinction since 1998.

Simultaneous renewals with Anheuser-Busch and Labatt, which markets and distributes Bud Light in Canada, gives the brand category exclusivity and a brand presence in-game and at retail across North America. Financial terms were not disclosed, but analysts put the figure at $75 million.

Sheesh. 10 years and $75 million and I’ve still never had the urge to drink a Bud Light.

Filed in: NHL Talk, NHL Business of Hockey | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: budweiser, marketing,

European Scheduling

by Alanah McGinley on 02/05/08 at 12:52 AM ET
Comments (0)

From David W. Unkle via Slam! Sports,

“Personally would I like to do it again, no,” said Pronger who also played games in Nagano and Turin. “Do I think it’s good for the NHL? I think it is but personally would I want to do it again? It’s a long way to go for a couple of games…for us this year it probably wasn’t the right move with the short summer…we weren’t the right team.”

Agreeing with Pronger is Vancouver’s Henrik Sedin.

“If you look at Anaheim and the struggles they went through when they came back home, you have to do it a different way,” said Sedin, who feels that the NHL should give teams more than a few days to acclimate to the time change.

more...

Filed in: NHL Talk | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: anaheim+ducks, chris+pronger, henrik+sedin, hockey+schedule, international+hockey, marketing,

New Nashville Owners Have A Marketing Plan

by Paul on 11/29/07 at 06:01 PM ET
Comments (0)

from the Tennessean,

The National Hockey League’s Board of Governors is expected to approve Craig Leipold’s $193 million sale of the Predators to Freeman’s group this afternoon. Freeman and his colleagues could take control of the team as early as today.
The new owners plan to give Poile some guidance on the budget he can work with, which will allow him to start working on new contracts for players whose deals expire at the end of this season....

Freeman said the new owners will make their presence felt most in the Predators’ efforts to get more people into the Sommet Center’s seats for 41 home games a year.

read on

Update 9:50pm ET (alanah): BOG has approved the sale of the Nashville Predators.

Filed in: NHL Teams, Nashville Predators | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: marketing, nashville+predators, nhl+board+of+governors,

New Spots For NHL Network

by Paul on 11/26/07 at 08:14 AM ET
Comments (1)

from BrandWeek,

The fledgling NHL Network, which last month launched in the U.S., will break a campaign targeting core fans who live and breathe hockey as well as fringe fans not yet aware that the 24/7 network is up and running.

The spots, the first for NHL Network from Cenergy Communications, East Aurora, N.Y., will juxtapose nonstop action from the 1950s and 1960s with that from the 2007-08 campaign. One spot begins with black-and-white footage of a game between the Detroit Red Wings and Montreal Canadiens purposely made to look as if it was being viewed on a TV screen with really bad reception.

continued

Filed in: NHL Media, Hockey Broadcasting, NHL Network | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: marketing, media, nhl+network,

You Be The Judge

by George James Malik on 11/13/07 at 07:40 AM ET
Comments (11)

Versus has an ad promoting today’s If-you-don’t-have-our-channel-it-sucks-to-be-you game between the St. Louis Blues and Detroit Red Wings, and the picture is, to say the least, one of those images that would make a “We didn’t land on the moon” conspiracy theorist giddy as a schoolgirl:

Paul sent this one to me with a simple question--is this really Chris Chelios?--and when he suggested that it looked more like Brendan Shanahan, save the 06-07 Easton gloves, I agreed. As a hockey picture hound, however, I went to town on the image, looking for inconsistencies…

Filed in: NHL Media, Hockey Broadcasting, VERSUS | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: marketing, media, versus,

‘Live Every Shift’

by Alanah McGinley on 10/29/07 at 12:03 PM ET
Comments (0)

From NHL.com,

The National Hockey League (NHL) debuts two TV spots featuring the new NHL tagline “Live Every Shift,” today on NHL.com. The spots will air for the first time tonight during the VERSUS broadcast of the San Jose Sharks - Dallas Stars game, and will re-air later this week on TSN, CBC, HDNet and NHL Network. The ads were written and produced by top advertising agency Young & Rubicam in collaboration with NHL Productions. This is the first creative work done by Y&R since being hired as the NHL’s Agency of Record in September.

continued... *You can see the new advertisements at that link as well

Update 3:37pm ET:
More on the TV spots with Dan Rosen at NHL.com.

Filed in: NHL Talk, NHL Business of Hockey, NHL Media | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: marketing,