An interesting conversation between Jeff Marek and Anton Thun
I think a Euro tournament is interesting, and big time soccer teams will go to other countries to help grow their brand, but we need rinks at home, too. The amount of soccer in Europe is immense, and it may actually make more sense to make the game accessible to the nearest elementary school, than to worry about Copenhagen.
FIFA has published its Professional Football Report 2023 that provides a comprehensive overview of men’s professional football across all 211 FIFA Member Associations (MAs) and launched an online database to encourage clubs to seek out best practice.
inside.fifa.com
Based on the report, there were 128,694 professional male footballers at 3,986 clubs in 135 countries around the world. Mexico had both the most professional players (9,464) - with Spain (8,560) and England (5,582) next - and the most clubs (244), followed by Türkiye (136) and Argentina (118).
The issue I see with China is that the government is too big of a factor. It was maybe like 2016ish when movies, the NBA, etc. were all trying to get into China. Whenever John Cena spoke Mandarin. Around that time.
Every company would desperately twist and contort themselves to appease the Chinese government, but China has an entire economy at its disposal. They can just make their own movies that meet their own standards, and be even bigger hits than Hollywood imports, with all the money going to China. No 25% cut to the west. They can conscript the best entertainers in the country to make sure it happens. The NHL or NBA would more than likely just create a LIV situation.
Hollywood's share of the Chinese box office has collapsed, but local authorities may now be offering a helping hand.
variety.com
Any investment into building the NHL in another country also increases the likelihood of a competitor who understands their home audience better. I think we should just embrace it. The NHL wants to be the NBA, and the NBA wants to be the NFL, but the NHL might want to become the Premier League instead. Public subsidy for hockey isn't going to happen. If we won't do healthcare, hockey rinks aren't going to make the cut, so it's got to come from private investment and using capitalism to delegate growing the game.
Pro soccer in Mexico isn't threatened by the EPL or Ligue 1. They can coexist.
If each and every NHL team would send all their draft picks to TB, they can be disposed of. A player will have to be picked, of course, with each of those picks, but that will be our burden.