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It's not just NCAA vs. top-level pro BTW. The "minor" pro leagues typically draw better in the US than in Canada as well. They just have a better-developed spectator sports culture. |
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One thing is that Americans are good at is hype. And believe me, I love the hype in sports too. But typically NCAA hockey games have 2500-5000 people packed into a small arena, with many fans being young students as opposed to Vern who drove into town from the farm in his Dodge Ram. So the atmosphere is usually a lot better. That comes through even on TV. |
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I don't think there are all that many new markets to move into in Canada... there are maybe a few cities in each of the three leagues that could potentially step up, but it would require new buildings and a lot of money. In the WHL, Lloydminster, Fort McMurray and maybe somewhere in the BC Interior (back to Cranbrook?) might be able to handle a team, but none of those are really slam dunks. On a related note, I took a peek at college hockey attendance stats and they are not that dissimilar from CHL numbers. There are two teams that seem to draw around the 10,000 mark or over: North Dakota and Wisconsin, although the latter took a bit of a covid dip: https://www.collegehockeynews.com/al...php?s=20212022 Sub in London and Quebec for those two and the rest of the numbers look pretty standard CHL-like. The top drawing New England team gets around 4,500 a game. Those are respectable, but not "taking the world by storm" numbers. |
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No question that NCAA crushes it in the hype game. The Bisons draw in the range of maybe one to two hundred fans a game. Maybe three hundred if it's big. I took my family to a couple of games last season and my son loves hockey so he doesn't care about the atmosphere, but my wife was wondering why I dragged her to a game that has smaller crowds than my daughter's ringette :haha: Meanwhile down the road at UND in Grand Forks, it's sellout crowds of 11,500, jumbotrons and pyrotechnics every game. |
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It will be interesting to see how NCAA hockey fares with the declining enrollment of male students across the board in US colleges.
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I don't think there is any comparison in the number of CHLers making it to the NHL every year, compared to the number of NCAAers.
If the number of NCAA programs is approaching the number of CHL clubs, if the calibre of play really is similar (or even better) then you'd expect they'd be producing a similar number of NHLers. |
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I'm not an expert on why players make certain decisions to go one way or the other, but the CHL does come with paid postsec education as well. Basically you get one year university paid for every year of CHL hockey you play. So a lot of U Sports players are former CHL players who continue to play competitive hockey into their 20s even though they are no longer on a path to the AHL/NHL. U Sports players who actually make it to the NHL are pretty exceptional to my knowledge. |
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The question that will eventually need to be answered for the CHL is how large does a city have to be and how much competition does there have to be for CHL teams to begin suffering and struggling? If they're strong in mid-sized markets how big can those markets get before those side-effects begin to be seen? Again, Halifax will be a good indicator, as will places like Langley and eventually KWC. We already know how they fair in the far-out suburbs of the major centres that they no longer have presence in. |
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Junior hockey, much like NCAA hockey, does best when it is the biggest game in town. Sure there is the odd place that can attract a good crowd even with a pro team in town, but by and large it's the smaller markets that embrace them the most. It makes sense for the junior teams to have a foothold in the large pro markets, but I don't think anyone seriously expects the junior team to take on a dominant role and start drawing 15,000 fans a night or what have you. Anyway, if hockey isn't relevant (or is of diminishing relevancy) in Canada, between all the major pro teams, all the minor pro teams, all the junior teams, all the amateur players and leagues... then what sport would you actually consider to be relevant? |
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NHL teams still do well but i'm not convinced that that support is as directly supportive of hockey as much as it is supportive of the brands of those teams or league. There's no real way to really gauge this and others are free to question this as much as they like, but I think you'll find more actual 'hockey fans' at CHL games than at NHL games, particularly those in the larger centres like Toronto. It's more NHL the Product rather than Hockey the Sport, if that makes sense. This is mostly conjecture on my behalf but it explains the wide gap between Canadians coming out for NHL hockey but not for CHL, women's, or any other various kinds at different levels. This works out fine for the NHL (money is money) but does a lot of damage to the sport at the grassroots level. When I talk about the relevancy of a sport in a market i'm mostly referring to sports as they pertain to themselves. That is to say, are the Leafs more or less relevant today in Toronto than they were in 1992? How about in specific areas like Downtown? Oshawa? Markham? If a market is a pie chart calculated to 100 what would the Leafs have taken up thirty years ago as opposed to today? (This sort of conversation is especially relevant to the Argos, whose popularity diminished with the introduce of more and more professional sports teams to Toronto over the decades). For the CHL, they're less relevant in these markets today than ever before simply by virtue of not having any presence in these markets (an argument over whether or not Langley qualifies as Vancouver or Mississauga as Toronto), offset in part by continued relevance in growing mid-sized markets. I'm not saying that hockey is no longer relevant in Canada - far from the truth as evidenced by just about anything - but if we're trying to trend these sorts of things out and gauge interest in various bodies then I think it's obvious that hockey is losing ground to sports that are quickly catching up to it in the general cachet of Canadian sports interest. Hockey in Canada is losing ground to hockey in the US and with other sports in Canada, so it remains to be seen how much it can, or will, be squeezed in the coming years. I think the best indicator of the difference in mindset between the NCAA and the CHL is in their national championships - where the NCAA has been holding its Frozen Four events at NHL arenas since the mid-1990s, whereas the CHL has stuck with smaller arenas in smaller markets. If the CHL were perhaps a little daring and willing to take a risk then they could expand their tournament and move it into an NHL arena for a week or so, contained to whatever league is hosting it on that cycle. An eight-team knockout Memorial Cup at the Bell Centre sounds more appealing than their round-robin and knockout formula in Blainville, IMO. It's a change like that that can get the CHL back into major cities and back into more relevancy in the mainstream outside of their mid-sized and small markets. As the Frozen Four travels to Tampa Bay and Las Vegas in the coming years the Memorial Cup will surely be off to Kamloops, Sudbury, and Rimouski... |
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Maybe it's been a while, though. |
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What a suprise NFL games placed on CTV rather than just TSN give a huge ratings boost to NFL games in Canada too bad Bell doesn't do this with their own property the CFL cough cough.
https://3downnation.com/2022/10/06/b...f-2022-season/ Week 4 NFL primetime games held steady as Thursday Night Football featuring the Miami Dolphins and Cincinnati Bengals on TSN and CTV2 averaged 803,100 viewers. Sunday Night Football with Patrick Mahomes and his Kansas City Chiefs against Tom Brady and his Tampa Bay Buccaneers averaged 677,000 viewers on TSN and CTV2. Monday Night Football between the defending Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams versus the San Francisco 49ers on TSN checked in at 549,100. These three standalone games averaged audiences of 676,400. 2022 Week 17 TV ratings: Friday Saskatchewan at Winnipeg — 701,800 Ottawa at BC — 425,200 Saturday Montreal at Edmonton — 233,400 Toronto at Calgary — 298,400 Total Week 17 average: 414,700 (These numbers do not include viewership from RDS, TSN’s French-language affiliate, which has averaged approximately 200,000 viewers for Alouettes games in 2022.) |
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CFL on TSN -> subscriber revenue purposes They're divided on purpose to drive separate revenue streams. Mixing them doesn't really benefit TSN as the CFL wouldn't garner higher advertising prices on CTV and NFL wouldn't boost subscribers on TSN (due mostly to lack of exclusivity). |
I sometimes wonder having one or two teams as part of US dominated leagues (including NHL) has hurt Canadian domestic leagues development and acceptance by a wider domestic audience. And as a result there are less positions for Canadians to play professional in their country.
Will the idea of having one or two Canadian teams in the US dominated woman’s professional soccer league help or hinder the establishment of a Canadian domestic woman’s professional soccer league. |
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