Could NHL surpass NBA?

[joelef]

Expense has little to do it. NBA / basketball is Heavily tied with pop culture and hip hop along with the fact that the nba markets there stars. Also the nba has college basketball/ march madness to get people excited about future stars while hockey has the chl which Dosent try to market in the USA. Over half of ncaa hockey are small northern d2 and d3 schools that the mainstream has never heard of.

 

[JFedol]

Hell no, basketball is heavily tied culturally with the most popular facets of pop culture. AAU is something else though price wise, but basketball has always been a easy sport to pick up and play.

 

[Phil Kessels Hot Dog]

...Hockey is also by far the most expensive sport to play...a LOT of kids just don't have the opportunity to play the game cuz it's soo expensive...

Anecdotally, I spend more for my kid to play Rep baseball than I did for Rep hockey.

 

[joelef]

The game is dying out in many places do to demographic changes. That why I want to “ grow the game”

 

[DrDangles]

Well yes, but no

 

[Erik Alfredsson]

I've been saying it for years, but the NHL has to increase the amount of teams that qualify for the playoffs if they want to grow the game more. You can't have half of the markets in the league looking at their franchises as failures. You have to grow and increase interest on a local level first before you can hope to grow nationwide. The efforts with stuff like the 4 Nations is nice, but that works because casual fans have a team to root for. You need a team to cheer for in sports, and no new fan is going to want to start cheering for their local team if their team isn't competitive.

When the 16 team format was introduced there were 21 teams in the league. There's 32 now. It needs to expand to 20 or even 24 teams. New markets like Utah and Seattle would especially benefit from this.

 

[SirJW]

Yes, for 30 years they've had the chance to surpass the NBA.

 

[castle]

Actually that’s a very Westernized perspective. Cricket is the 2nd most popular sport in the world with 2.5 billion fans. Field hockey/hockey is 3rd. Basketball is 7th.

This is terms of fans.

Not sure what you mean by westernised. Do you just mean north America?
It's still pretty niche, being a sport for the former empire or commonwealth or whatever you want to call it. Most of Europe and Asia and Africa and South America couldn't care less, in addition to North America.
But in India, Pakistan, the UK, Australia, South Africa, and some West Indies it's a big sport.
2.5 billion fans? Whoever came up with that fanciful number must just be counting the entire population of India as fans. They might not be far off, though.

 

[Auston Marlander]

...this is the Team Sports chat, not the Recreational Activity chat...

You said sport, you said nothing about teams.

 

[shello]

One successful tournament does not change the fact that hockey is simply too expensive, regardless of your level. Basketball will always have the edge because of that

 

[Nstar to Wild]

I think both sports need to pay attention. I live in MN and don't watch either sport because of their television contracts. Both are on Fan duel, bally sports, or whatever they call themselves these days.

I've found there are other sports, movies, outdoor activities, etc. that can fill the void. Look at baseball - it used to be the major sport in the US - now ESPN has even told them to get lost.

In the grand scheme - Most people like sports, but at some point it's not worth it. I'm going fishing.

 

[ORRFForever]

No.

 

[Bood12]

They were close in 94, both the NHL and NBA were getting more popular, the Rangers winning in 94 while I personally hated definitely helped as did the emergence of roller hockey which more and more kids were playing, but than the idiots decided to have a strike that following season and the NBA has been dominant since and the NHL has been a distance behind

 

[acor]

1. No
2. So what?

There was a time when I simply didn't gave a shit if hockey is popular or not.
Now I changed my mind- I WANT it to be unpopular. I live in a place when NHL is not popular and I deeply appreicate the fact that I don't see ugly mugs of hockey players on bilboards and in commercials, that media don't write about them all time, and if once in a blue moon I'll run into fellow NHL fan I know it will be someone I can have a quality discussion with, not so called "casual fan", lol.

 

[Howboutthempanthers]

NBA is a better run league and business than the NHL. Until, the NHL improves that, no chance of that every being even a possibility.

I don't see that. I think the NBA managed terribly.

 

[Mad Dog Tannen]

Not until there are more black players in hockey. A big reason why half the population doesn't watch is because there's nobody who looks like them.

Gross.

 

[DaBadGuy7]

I don't see that. I think the NBA managed terribly.

And you think the NHL is managed better in comparison?!?!?!

 

[Golden_Jet]

And you think the NHL is managed better in comparison?!?!?!

NBA is not a hard bar to surpass.

 

[DaBadGuy7]

it’s not a hard bar to surpass.

For the NHL, it is. Any comparsion between NBA and NHL from any business or popularity standpoint is a silly one. The leagues are not anywhere near each other.

 

[Howboutthempanthers]

And you think the NHL is managed better in comparison?!?!?!

Yes?

 

[DaBadGuy7]

Yes?

All you need to see the economics of the two leagues to see you are very much wrong. One league just signed a 76+ billion deal media rights deal, the other will be lucky to get close to half of the that when it’s US media rights are up.

 

[Golden_Jet]

Not anytime soon. The NBA is cool and relevant in mainstream pop culture in ways the NHL could never dream of.

It’s a terrible product currently, unless you like to watch 3 point shots, was much better product decades ago.
Not really debatable comparing current NBA vs earlier NBA.

 

[AtlantaHockeyFanatic]

...Hockey is also by far the most expensive sport to play...a LOT of kids just don't have the opportunity to play the game cuz it's soo expensive...

Not only expensive, but the lack of rinks in some areas prevent kids from getting exposed to it early. The closest ice rink to where I stay in the Atlanta area is 50 minutes on the other side of town.

That doesn't really say anything lmao. On a global scale, Basketball is not that much more relevant than hockey. It probably has a better growth platform though, just because of China.

This is false. There are random basketball goals up everywhere in the Philippines and Japan. I was stationed overseas and basketball is way more popular than hockey.

 

[Golden_Jet]

The closest ice rink to where I stay in the Atlanta area is 50 minutes on the other side of town.

So 5 miles away?

 

[McShogun99]

...imo, Canadians can't speak as unbiased on this issue as well as people from other Countries can, as Hockey is a religion here...

It will start dying as Canada grows more. When I was a kid you'd see people playing street hockey everywhere and community rinks were full of kids. Now the rinks are much slower and you rarely see kids playing street hockey but I'm seeing kids playing basketball everywhere now.