A positive thread about the ASG women's 3 on 3 match

[Rich Nixon]

lock outs and stoppages for the differences of 1-5 percent....think losing revenue to prop up a product that may not support itself won't cause a problem somewhere?

Depends on how much money you're spending, obviously, and where it's coming from.

Well now you are arguing about concert fees which would be live performances which indeed does not happen on a weekly basis. Say what you want about leagues spending money like this but they are all making profits doing it. Your alternative to spend that money on a womens league has been proven to not make money. The entire existence of the WNBA, they have never turned a profit.

No, we're talking about waste. If you know generally how the music industry works in regards to booking and licensing, ya gotta laugh when ya see the NHL waste money on bad music that does not add to their public profile or brand. I can't prove that to you outright, maybe a hundred thousand Green Day fans are now NHL season ticket holders because of the crappy Wednesday Night intro--but I can say with near-certainty those dollars are about as sunken as they get.

I'm not arguing something else wouldn't also lose money--I'm not even arguing for it to exist in the first place, if you recall. I'm just trying to press a little here on just how much people actually care about the NHL wasting their money. Because it does that all the time, through countless different outlets. Like any other business.

So, what is it about wasting money* on a women's hockey league that makes people suddenly care about all that waste? Certainly the visibility of it is part of the matter, of course. You'd know generally how much it lost, as compared to all the other crap that isn't right up front.

*That is, if you even see it that way. Perhaps the goodwill and brand exposure offset the costs to an acceptable (if unquantifiable) degree.

 

[Hammettf2b]

Depends on how much money you're spending, obviously, and where it's coming from.



No, we're talking about waste. I know generally how the music industry works in regards to booking and licensing, so I laugh when I see the NHL waste money on bad music that does not add to their public profile or brand. I can't prove that too you outright, maybe a hundred thousand Green Day fans are now NHL season ticket holders because of the crappy Wednesday Night intro--but I can say with near-certainty those dollars are about as sunken as they get.

I'm not arguing something else wouldn't also lose money--I'm not even arguing for it to exist in the first place, if you recall. I'm just trying to press a little here on just how much people actually care about the NHL wasting their money. Because it does that all the time, through countless different outlets. Like any other business.

So, what is it about wasting money on a women's hockey league that makes people suddenly care about all that waste? Certainly the visibility of it is part of the matter, of course.

Because "wasting" money on the marketing of the game and entertainment value is a much more acceptable to people than "wasting" money on a league nobody is asking for or wanting to fund for that matter.

 

[Rich Nixon]

Because "wasting" money on the marketing of the game and entertainment value is a much more acceptable to people than "wasting" money on a league nobody is asking for or wanting to fund for that matter.

I keep editing previous posts to include what I believe the next one will have to, and not getting it done in time.

So, as the last one says: That's all a matter of perception. Could the league not argue that a women's league would be part of its own marketing and outreach efforts? Perhaps it would be. It's very hard to concretely track how effective brand marketing like that is. Certainly it would court goodwill from media and proponents' of women's sports. It's still marketing, one way or the other, and still part of its entertainment profile. Do you think we can qualitatively argue whether the NHL is drawing more fans by giving Billie Joe Armstrong $1 million, or giving 20 women's hockey players $50,000? I don't think there's any way to objectively debate that.

Funny you bring up what "no one is asking for." Last time I was at a game I actually heard people chanting "WE! WANT! MORE! CORPORATE! RELATIONSHIPS! WITH! HACKNEYED! MEGABANDS!"

As I said: I'm not even advocating for a subsidized league here, I'm just kinda raising the questions that come to mind when I read people arguing on it.

 

[Hammettf2b]

I keep editing previous posts to include what I believe the next one will have to, and not getting it done in time.

So, as the last one says: That's all a matter of perception. Could the league not argue that a women's league would be part of its own marketing and outreach efforts? Perhaps it would be. It's very hard to concretely track how effective brand marketing like that is. Certainly it would court goodwill from media and proponents' of women's sports. It's still marketing, one way or the other, and still part of its entertainment profile. Do you think we can qualitatively argue whether the NHL is drawing more fans by giving Billie Joe Armstrong $1 million, or giving 20 women's hockey players $50,000? I don't think there's any way to objectively debate that.

That was my point in a previous post. IMO it wouldn't. I would like to see the numbers of how many new NBA fans are accumulated via the existence of the WNBA. That would be an interesting study and if it turned out it garners more income via new fans than spending on the new league then I would be all for it. Get rid of all the bands you'd like and spend it on this new league, however, I don't think the experts think its worth the investment as they probably would have done it by now.

 

[Garyboy]

Do you think we can qualitatively argue whether the NHL is drawing more fans by giving Billie Joe Armstrong $1 million, or giving 20 women's hockey players $50,000? I don't think there's any way to objectively debate that.

Do you think the women should be paid more than ECHL, SPHL, other minor-pro leagues, where these men play a much longer season, much more physically gruelling game, generate more money? The league needs to simply look at how the WNBA is doing.

 

[Rich Nixon]

Do you think the women should be paid more than ECHL, SPHL, other minor-pro leagues, where these men play a much longer season, much more physically gruelling game, generate more money? The league needs to simply look at how the WNBA is doing.

I think if you follow my posts here one of my biggest points is "My thoughts here don't matter." I don't give a damn how that randomly-spitballed number would stack up, I'm just throwing that out there. Hell, we've brought up music a bunch, so we'll keep it there for this analogy: Do you think it's FAIR that the hardest workin' band on the Cleveland bar scene makes less money than BTS? No, because BTS is a rarer draw. "The best women's hockey players on earth" is a better corporate asset than "the 1000th to 15000th best male players on Earth."

 

[Hammettf2b]

I think if you follow my posts here one of my biggest points is "My thoughts here don't matter." I don't give a damn how that would stack up, I'm just throwing that out there. Hell, we've brought up music a bunch, so we'll keep it there for this analogy: Do you think it's FAIR that the hardest workin' band on the Cleveland bar scene makes less money than BTS? No, because BTS is a better draw. "The best women's hockey players on earth" is a better draw than "the 1000th to 15000th best male hockey players on earth!" because...that's how it works.

It doesn't matter how hard they work, it matters how much money they can bring in.

 

[Emperoreddy]

The game was better then pretty much anything else held during all star weekend.

They absolutely should do it again next year and find a way to expand and improve it.

 

[Rich Nixon]

It doesn't matter how hard they work, it matters how much money they can bring in.

We're in agreement here I had to tweak for clarity.

 

[Dessloch]

The NHL are a bit behind. Brynas IF in sweden already let women play WITH the men in similar games:

The women who played enjoyed playing with Niklas Backstrom, Calle Jarnkrok, Oskar Lindblom, Elias Lindholm, Jakob Silferberg, Jacob Markstrom etc, it was really fun to watch that.



---
On topic, I liked to see the girls play Fun to see north america women players for a change.

We have the best womens hockey league here in sweden, the SDHL. And I watch every game and enjoy it very much!

Here is a clip from a game and in the locker room etc:

 

[Dessloch]

In fact I nearly got into a fight with some asshat today about womens hockey, the dude said: "Women is a tough sport, its not for women, they should focus on being beautiful" and being dead serious.

Like its not possible to play hockey and also be beautiful...

We need more girls and women playing hockey everywhere to break the stigma and make hockey a sport for everyone! I salute the NHL for their recent promotion of ladies hockey.

 

[Frank Drebin]

The game was better then pretty much anything else held during all star weekend.

They absolutely should do it again next year and find a way to expand and improve it.

I've been contrarian in this thread but I think they should do the same thing again too next year. Its just about the right amount of exposure for the product I think,- that is, those that watched and enjoyed the game aren't necessarily knocking down doors to see when the next WNHL game is. They'll happily watch it next year.

 

[Aceboogie]

Great hockey. And no lie, I could even see a girl play in the mens 3 vs 3 in the next 5 years. Poulin looked so skilled out there. Have them in the mens game, where they are only going 50% anyway. Extremely novel, but would bring some interest

 

[Kaners Bald Spot]

They have women, too. Look in the stands at NHL games. This is about caving to societal pressure to bankroll a league they know will lose money. All the fans on here claiming to be big fans of the women’s game should donate some of your money to PWHPA and get the wheels in motion on the new professional league. Get in touch with Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres, the cast of The View. I’m sure they’d all love to help the female hockey fans make this league a reality. The NHL is clearly dragging their feet on this. You can make a difference.

I'm not going to watch. It's more about 8-16 year old girls than anything else. They want to create a generation of female hockey fans/players.

For all of you that say that sports is a business and not a social experiment, tell that to Branch Rickey. I honestly think that the racial integration of baseball helped the civil rights movement significantly.

 

[ALLCAPSALLTHETIME]

Kudos to the women. Much better than the joke of the NHL all star game.

There was actual passion in the woman’s game.

Very entertaining. They should do it again.

 

[Aceboogie]

Anyone who thinks that sports leagues are profitable from day 1 are being ignorant of history. Every sports league received ample subsidies to get up and running and would have failed without them (or ran at losses).

Even from a business/profit POV. If you could get the right type of league for womans hockey, you could probably do the math and figure out that investing X Million in the league for the first 5 years and running losses will inevitably lead to higher female interest in hockey as a whole (including NHL) and that higher interest will lead to higher viewership/merch & ticket sales and will recoup the cost in the long run.

If I was a betting man, Id say the bigger market NHL teams will all have an affiliate WNHL (or whatever the league will be), and they can have a 10-15 team tournament league and can have tournaments in the different big cities each weekend. The NHL could do a ton with type of set up. Say a Toronto vs Boston NHL game on Sunday in Toronto, then have a WNHL tournament on Friday/Saturday

 

[Rich Nixon]

That was my point in a previous post. IMO it wouldn't. I would like to see the numbers of how many new NBA fans are accumulated via the existence of the WNBA. That would be an interesting study and if it turned out it garners more income via new fans than spending on the new league then I would be all for it. Get rid of all the bands you'd like and spend it on this new league, however, I don't think the experts think its worth the investment as they probably would have done it by now.

So I guess I want to double back to a question:

Do you think the NHL is the gold standard for league marketing and promotions in North American sports? Have you agreed with their distribution and marketing decisions to the point that you have previously described them as "experts"?

I doubt you have, or perhaps you have, but that's certainly not the consensus around these parts or any others.

Because you might actually be talking me into this. You get a partner to cross-develop-content-slash-build-goodwill-slash-lose-money with--Gatorade! Adidas! ESPN!--boom, you're cruisin', right? Everybody loses a couple million dollars but gets a buncha friendly headlines and a few billion in social impressions, that seems like 2020 market value, kinda savvy. So you'd need any company other than the NHL to try it.

 

[LaGu]

Anyone who thinks that sports leagues are profitable from day 1 are being ignorant of history. Every sports league received ample subsidies to get up and running and would have failed without them (or ran at losses).

Even from a business/profit POV. If you could get the right type of league for womans hockey, you could probably do the math and figure out that investing X Million in the league for the first 5 years and running losses will inevitably lead to higher female interest in hockey as a whole (including NHL) and that higher interest will lead to higher viewership/merch & ticket sales and will recoup the cost in the long run.

If I was a betting man, Id say the bigger market NHL teams will all have an affiliate WNHL (or whatever the league will be), and they can have a 10-15 team tournament league and can have tournaments in the different big cities each weekend. The NHL could do a ton with type of set up. Say a Toronto vs Boston NHL game on Sunday in Toronto, then have a WNHL tournament on Friday/Saturday

I think they need to think about how to set it up, of course the trial run with a full pro-league didn't work out but I also saw some interesting study about the NWHL vs SDHL (Swe women league). The SDHL is working just fine and this season got a lot more exposure this season with a new TV deal. So taking stock after this season it will be interesting to see how things went. The teams and players are tied to an affiliate, an SHL club (or SWE 2nd league), which helps quite a bit in the organization. The goal is to get to full pro-league, but they are treading slowly and especially use the ties with affiliate teams to get a stronger base (fan base). Doing commercials and showing dates for the women's games during the men's games.

One thing pretty nice is that the junior regional tournament (girls and boys play at the same time) which is played every year in Sweden (U15) this year got raving reviews. Some journalists are already salivating for this generation to grow up since they think it could mean big things for Sweden in women's hockey, but also for growing the game. I didn't see it myself but it is funny that one of the things brought up in this thread, the hard passes and shots (or lack there-0f), was specifically mentioned by reporters at the game. They said it was surprising to see such accuracy, speed and strength in puck movement. Hard shots and crisp passes, and this from kids 13-14 years old.

 

[choirboy]

I'm not going to watch. It's more about 8-16 year old girls than anything else. They want to create a generation of female hockey fans/players.

For all of you that say that sports is a business and not a social experiment, tell that to Branch Rickey. I honestly think that the racial integration of baseball helped the civil rights movement significantly.

Branch Rickey and the signing of Jackie Robinson have nothing in common with the sustainability/entitlement of a womens hockey League .

The exclusion of players of color in MLB was encompassed with racism as the primary reason. This despite the talent of the coloured players were equal or higher than many players on the current rosters. If the ethnic players were substantially lower in overall talent and skill, it wouldn't have happened .

It just turned out to be a defining social movement after the fact. But don't kid yourself thinking the primary reason was socially motivated.

No one is excluding any woman from playing hockey in the current successful pro leagues. They just aren't good enough, period. To create a pro league so the ladies have a place to play as well soley due to them being female, despite having literally thousands upon thousands of better players out there who don't get paid much or a salary or at all would be a social white knight movement. Especially when the NHL, AHL, ECHL, other pro leagues in any country, CHL, CIS, college, all levels of NCAA, JR A, jr B, junior C, midget AAA and senior contactconta hockey(even small towns), in provinces, div 1 beer league are all higher quality.

If an owner wants to fund them go ahead and I wish them luck. But I can't see it ever being successful. I get it sucks to have so many people disperaging womens hockey which is wrong. However it's no worse than people like Cassie Campbell etc always talking about how great the quality is and how they deserve a league.

 

[Chimpradamus]

People talking about the WNHL being a guarantee, because in the long run it's profitable? Are you kidding me? Basketball is a much bigger and more popular sport, yet the WNBA has NEVER shown green signs in profitability. If a female professional league in basketball can't carry itself after decades of trying, how can it be a guarantee it will be profitable in hockey? It's much more probable of the opposite (a financial fiasco) than it being a success.



The NBA financially carrying and dragging the WNBA along is pure charity, nothing else. If a female hockey pro league can't even function in Canada, how can it be possible anywhere else?

Hockey fans aren't interested in watching women's hockey, certainly not if they have to pay for it and there's nothing going around this fact. The product isn't good enough and not entertaining enough to attract enough spectators for the whole machinery to go around.

The SDHL is considered the best women's hockey league in the world now and the spectator numbers are abysmal. Alot of teams barely have 100 people watching the home games. That's why most of them can't get paid. The only team with respectable numbers is Luleå (they get at least a couple of hundred). The worst team has on average 48 spectators. The cost for a ticket watching Luleå is about $10, $200 for season tickets.
Statistik lag 2019/2020 - SDHL.se

 

[orcatown]

Girls and Women deserve a chance to play hockey if they wish. In most cases that opportunity is provided. If some families need financial assistance in providing this, I think, where possible, this should be done (both for boys and goods) The equal opportunity to play hockey should be there and is.

But women players do not deserve to be provided a Professional League by others who have no interest in the League. A professional women's League is a result that must be earned by the people wanting such a League.

Asking for an equal opportunity is surely right but demanding a certain result is not.

Women have been given the chance to set up Leagues and vie, like many others, for their share of the entertainment market. This attempt has even been augmented by televising games and inclusion in the events like Home Town Hockey and now the All Star game. If they can, through the value of entertainment provided, get enough interest to support such a League good on them. But it is something other to demand or say you deserve a League if you can't get enough support to maintain your League.

Throughout this thread I see people blurring the distinction between asking for an opportunity and demanding certain outcomes.

If these women cannot make a League successful, based on their own efforts, then they have no right to demand that others do so for them. None of us have the right to expect others to make some business we might set up, be successful.

Far as the women's mini game goes, I think letting the women's game be displayed is providing an opportunity for the women to show off their product and I see little wrong with that (especially in the kind of celebration of hockey type setting of an All Star game). That might be a step in earning the ability to have a womens pro league. But, in the end, that outcome is on the people involved and not on others who do not have any interest in such a League.

 

[Jordan Belfort]

Great awareness I guess but how are people gonna pay to see it ? They are at about midget triples guys level. Just dont see the business case.

That’s just not true. Women don’t have the resources and don’t have the training, thus play the midget AAA level. Some of these girls could play ECHL.

 

[Rich Nixon]

People talking about the WNHL being a guarantee, because in the long run it's profitable?

Literally no one is saying that, as far as I can tell. I think Aceboogie a few posts before came close, but it was pretty heavily qualified.

But in terms of losing money, the WNBA is a funny example. I'm going to guess there are a few lone NBA teams that lose more money each year than that league does--unless the economics have changed significantly in the last two or three years*. The Cavaliers, the pre-Zion Pelicans, etc.

The NHL has plenty of teams losing cash. I know the Arizona Coyotes lose three times as much money every year as the WNBA does--and that's straight cash losses. The Predators are a success story, $11 million in net operating losses last year. The Jets, strong Canadian team, $3.5 million losses. A lot of things in sports lose a lot of money. I understand that's a good argument against starting another venture that's nearly-guaranteed to be a loss, I don't disagree with that argument either. Just throwing it out there.

It also might be a different environment today for women's sports than it was when the WNBA was launched in the 90's. I think companies are still trying to figure out if initial social flares can be translated into enduring success and popularity, but anyone eyeing the launch of a women's sports operation has to be salivating at the inevitable good press and social engagement--we live in an era where that would draw glowing media attention and a shitload of "RT [heart eyes] YAAAAAAAASSSS" responses. There's more of a wave now than there was in 1996. Whether that means anything longer term than the next 2-3 years, who knows.

*Just looked it up. After 14 teams lost money in 2017, only the Cavs did last year, congrats to the NBA.

 

[EurlichBachman]

That’s just not true. Women don’t have the resources and don’t have the training, thus play the midget AAA level. Some of these girls could play ECHL.

For arguments sake, lets assume that there are some girls that are good enough to play in the ECHL. Let's say all the girls that competed in the 3on3 are good enough, that gives you about 20 girls or enough for about 1 team. How do you make a compelling league out of that? ECHL players are making roughly $550/week, is that all the girls are looking to get paid? Surely that is not a livable wage. What resources or training do girls not have access to?

I am not trying to knock the women, they are fantastic athletes in their own right. I just don't know how you make a compelling/profitable league out of it.

Edit: Take out the profitable part. I still don't know how you make a compelling league.

 

[Viqsi]

Here, I'll help you out since you clearly don't keep up with NWHL news (it's ok, nobody does). Every game of the 2019-20 season, including playoff games and special events, is broadcast live on Twitch for free here.

I'm aware. But watching streams on Twitch doesn't exactly constitute financial support when one routinely has adblockers turned on. Otherwise, I do catch games now and again. It's just that I had troubles finding it back when I was trying to follow Buffalo because I was interested in how Harrison Browne was doing, and I otherwise was following Hilary Knight and she was primarily in the CWHL.

* * *​

Oh, so you're the one.

If a hockey league fails to make money...in Canada...pretty sure that's as big of an indicator that it is not a viable concept as anything can be.

Worth pointing out that there were some really bizarre business decisions such that one can't just say "women's hockey is fail". The CWHL had multiple teams in China, for example, which is going to play merry hell with travel costs.