A Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League game will soon be on national television in the United States for the first time, the league announced on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The PWHL\u2019s March 28 \u201cTakeover Tour\u201d game between the New York Sirens and the Montreal Victoire will now air on ION, the E.W. Scripps Company\u2019s sports and entertainment network, at 1 p.m. ET. The neutral-site game will be held at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit for the second time this season as the PWHL eyes expansion beyond its eight current franchises.<\/p>\n
Through ION \u2014 which is available via pay TV, connected TV, free ad-supported streaming platforms and free over-the-air \u2014 the game will be accessible to more than 126 million U.S. households, according to the PWHL\u2019s press release, \u201crepresenting a landmark moment in the league\u2019s development and a significant opportunity for new fans to discover the league.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo have Scripps and ION come in and put our game out to 120-plus million people is huge,\u201d said PWHL executive vice president of business operations Amy Scheer. \u201cThe more people we reach \u2014 that\u2019s only going to help our league grow and succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ion is also a weekly home for nationally televised WNBA and NWSL games, with Friday night WNBA doubleheaders drawing solid ratings over the last few seasons. According to Scripps, 11 WNBA games on ION have averaged more than one million viewers.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo have our game on the home of the NWSL and the WNBA is huge,\u201d said Scheer. \u201cIt puts us in that category with those two other preeminent women\u2019s leagues. That\u2019s where we are and where we need to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Canada, national broadcast rights for all 120 PWHL games this season are split between TSN, Sportsnet, CBC and Prime Video. In the United States, games are generally available locally on regional sports networks \u2014 such as NESN in Boston and MSG Network in New York \u2014 and on YouTube nationwide. But, in its third season, the PWHL lacks a national media rights deal in the U.S.<\/p>\n
That makes the March 28 game on ION a massive first at a time of unprecedented momentum for the PWHL after the Winter Olympics. According to the league, the PWHL is approaching an all-time in-arena attendance of two million and is seeing a 20 percent year-over-year increase in average attendance.<\/p>\n
Since the Olympics ended last month, the PWHL has set a new U.S. arena attendance record with 17,335 fans at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, and seen two of its biggest home venue ticket sales days (Feb. 24 and 25). The league also said fans have driven a 101 percent increase in merchandise sales. Just last week, the Sirens played in front of their largest home crowd (8,264) in team history \u2014 a significant sign of growth for the league, which has struggled to get a strong foothold in the New York market.<\/p>\n
All that increased interest in women\u2019s hockey made now a \u201cperfect\u201d time for a nationally televised game, according to Scripps Sports president Brian Lawlor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want these women who got so much interest three weeks ago to be forgotten,\u201d Lawlor said in an interview with The Athletic. \u201cWe think there\u2019s a great moment and a great opportunity to put them on national television now and build some energy around that and hopefully we all build from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawlor said he\u2019s hoping the game in Detroit will not be a \u201cone-time only\u201d event, and that the goal is to put the PWHL on ION on a more consistent basis, \u201cso that the whole country gets to see the quality of play.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t qualify (the game) as a test run,\u201d he added. \u201cI would say it\u2019s a first step; There\u2019s mutual interest to continue to grow the relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the PWHL, the ION game will still be available to fans on YouTube, something Lawlor said the network did not want to disrupt, but rather help add to.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think our platform will bring in a ton of new fans,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd my expectation is that many of the fans who watch our game will probably then go and start to follow (the PWHL) on YouTube, where they can watch every game and pick their teams.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ally Financial is the presenting sponsor of both the telecast and the \u201cTakeover Tour\u201d game itself, contributing to the company\u2019s 50\/50 pledge to spend equally between men\u2019s and women\u2019s sports media.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was so much rabid fandom around the (U.S.) women\u2019s team \u2026 that it was just something we felt like we wanted to be a part of and really make sure that that heat didn\u2019t die down,\u201d said Andrea Brimmer, Ally\u2019s chief marketing and public relations officer. \u201cIt\u2019s easy post-Olympics for everybody to just forget and to go back to real life. We didn\u2019t want people to forget.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League game will soon be on national television in the United States for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[17,66848,9,11,10,24233,539,23,33205],"class_list":["post-162115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-culture","tag-montreal-victoire","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-sirens","tag-nhl","tag-sports-business","tag-womens-hockey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}