Ask the majority of Americans and they might tell you they don’t watch hockey. Some may even commit the blasphemy of saying hockey is just like soccer on ice. GASP! It’s hard for me to even type that. People that say that obviously haven’t watched a professional hockey game, especially in person. There is something contributing to this and it’s the NHL itself. The NHL needs to do a better job to grow the sport of hockey in the U.S. It all has to do with access in two big ways. Participation and viewing. Let me explain.
Hockey is not a cheap sport to play. You’re talking head to toe gear. It’s also a very difficult sport to learn and if you don’t get into it fairly young, it makes it even more challenging to be able to participate even at a recreational level. To add to this you need a special venue that can make and maintain ice that is high enough quality to safely and repeatedly play on. I think the NHL could help by promoting more roller hockey. Roller hockey can be played year-round and indoors or outdoors. It needs no special venue except for a smooth surface. It can be played with a ball or puck. Granted, the skating skills do not 100% translate from roller to ice skating. But it’s definitely in the same ballpark.
Perhaps the bigger reason, at least in my opinion, is that it can be crazy frustrating and expensive to watch a dang NHL game on TV. ESPN, ESPN Plus, TNT, TBS, NHLN, and HULU. These are all of the TV services you would need to secure in order to watch every NHL game, even for just one team. This is absolutely ridiculous.
If you don’t have all of these services and you want to watch a game on another service, you sometimes have to wait SEVERAL days in order to watch it. By then you may already have missed another game or two and have to catch up. Imagine sitting down in your favorite hockey jersey (click on this link to shop for some amazing NHL apparel!) just to find out you can’t watch the game until tomorrow or even the day after that.
What other reasons do you think hockey falls behind other sports in popularity in the U.S? Let us know!
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