The NFL and ESPN effectively merged earlier this week. <\/p>\n
The NFL, the football league, now owns 10 percent of ESPN. ESPN, the sports network, acquired several key assets in return, including NFL Network and the ownership of the RedZone brand. <\/p>\n
As lots of other people have written before me, it\u2019s a pretty big move for the NFL, which is still technically a football league, but more of a media empire that happens to run a football competition. <\/p>\n
This is pretty common in sports, particularly in global soccer, where power brands like Barcelona, PSG, and Real Madrid, have grown to a spot where they are more so content and media companies that happen to play sports, too. Formula 1, too, I would argue, is now more of a media and content empire that happens to run races on Sundays. <\/p>\n
The NHL has dabbled here, there have been steps, but at its core the hockey league still remains more of a hockey league than a media\/content enterprise. Hockey isn\u2019t popular enough nor does it have the same reach as those other behemoths, and trying to compare it to those other sports, frankly, is disingenuous. <\/p>\n
All that being said, this ESPN-NFL deal could be notable for hockey fans. <\/p>\n
As a reminder, ESPN is the NHL\u2019s primary rights holder in the United States, holding the “A Package\u201d and the out-of-market rights, which live on ESPN+. And the NFL, through this new deal, is now technically a stakeholder in the NHL\u2019s success as a brand. <\/p>\n
And even before this deal, the NHL schedule has been adjusted because of football and ESPN, albeit for the NCAA. One of the reasons the NHL season doesn\u2019t start earlier, and therefore the Stanley Cup is awarded in late June, is because ESPN wants to delay the start of the season as long as possible so there\u2019s less crossover with it\u2019s college football properties. <\/p>\n
That, of course, could feel a bit scary for hockey fans. Football always held power over hockey \u2014 many teams in the sunbelt areas, for example, ask for less home games in the first half of the season to avoid football \u2014 and now that power was given a formal additional boost with the top American broadcast partner. <\/p>\n
But, I do think, and maybe this is the optimist in me, that there\u2019s a nice potential silver lining here if the NHL is smart about understanding how the RedZone brand could be pitched to boost NHL viewership. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n