Re: 2014 Sochi Olympic Games Women's Ice Hockey Tournament
New professional leagues that survive tend to fall into one or more of three categories:
1) Have serious financial backing from some other operation. The WNBA is an example of this;
2) Take advantage of some sort of demographic opening. MLS falls into this category, appealing to both the enormous number of people who grew up playing soccer and the growth of the Latino population that grew up watching professional soccer;
3) Small leagues that are willing to operate on the margins while also functioning as de facto minor/developmental leagues for bigger players. The various arena football leagues that have come and gone (and for whom the term "survived" is often used loosely) are examples.
Women's ice hockey won't have any of these advantages. Given that there is no evidence that there is much crossover between fans of a men's sport and fans of the same sport played by women there really isn't any way to take advantage of increasing popularity of men's hockey.
The league that I think bears the most resemblance to anything that we could hope for is Major League Lacrosse. And to be honest, that's barely a step up from the CWHL. The players are paid anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000 per season. Teams have come and gone, with MLL fluctuating between six, eight, and ten teams in any given season. They've never played more than 14 games each in a season. What will be hard to replicate is that MLL averages more than 5,000 fans per game. The National Lacrosse League is similar, though with a longer history, a more Canadian orientation, and a couple of extra thousand fans per game. Even with that attendance, though, the players can't be anything like full time.
That's the best case scenario.
You make some great points. I personally love women's hockey! I'd love for their to be a women's professional league, but the reality is just as you laid it out, its probably not going to happen.
Reality.
Life sucks sometimes. Reality sucks ALOT. Why isn't there a professional Cheer Team League, or a Professional Rowing League or a Professional Water Polo League? The best athletes in the world in those sports ALSO have to move on and get real jobs when their collegiate careers are over. And most of the more individual based sports like gymnastics, swimming and diving, track and field, etc., are also sports with very little in the way of a life after college.
Another aspect that most are forgetting, is that a lot of people who follow pro sports, do not follow college sports, and vice versa. Personally I don't watch more than the occasional Wild game, or Timberwolves game or Twins game, until they make the playoffs. Then as a Minnesotan my state pride kicks in and I follow them through the playoffs. But I watch the Gophers BB, Fb, men's hockey and women's hockey, wrestling, womens bb, and volleyball whenever they are on tv, and listen to the hockey, fb or bb games when I can't get them on tv and keep up with them and others like womens and mens gymnastics for example, on the internet. I am primarily a COLLEGE sports fan. Honestly, I might not give a hoot about the Olympics either, if it wasn't for former gophers being involved. Call me unpatriotic if you will, but its not that I don't want the US to do well, I do, but some of the sports don't interest me is all.
So I have to ask myself, if I had to choose between spending money to go to a Minneapolis Freeze Women's Pro Hockey game, or a Gophers Men's Hockey game or a Gophers Mens BB game or a Gophers Women's Hockey game, I'd choose the Gophers. That Minnesota Freeze game would be my 4th highest priority, at best. Unless it was the playoffs, of course.
AND, that Minnesota Freeze roster would need to have a lot of former Gopher's on the team as well.
Although, if that Minnesota Freeze team played its games during the summer, now then they'd get me to come to those games a lot more often.
And that's the thing, a professional womens hockey league, imho, would have to play its games during the summer so as not to compete with college hockey, as the majority of its fans would probably be college hockey fans, at least at the beginning, and they also couldn't compete with the NHL for fans of professional hockey, either. Teams would have to be located in Minneapolis, St Paul, Fargo, Duluth & Madison so as to capitalize on the past and recent success of those 4 college programs and their players and to limit travel expenses, for the most part and like they did in the old days, I think the teams would need to implement some sort of regional draft system, so that, for example, the Minneapolis Freeze would have a good percentage of its roster being former Gophers, maybe mixed in with some foreign players and then a mix of eastern players as well? Just thinking outloud I guess? Please don't berate me too harshly if any of these ideas aren't very good?
OR, the NHL could subsidize a professional womens league with teams located in cities that would best fit the interests of the NHL, if such circumstances exist?
Maybe convincing NHL executives that the best way to get more women interested in watching NHL hockey, is to first get them interested in Women's hockey?!
Convince NHL executives that the best way to increase how much men spend on hockey, is to get their wives and girlfriends hooked on following hockey as well, by way of getting them to first support women's hockey?!
I don't know, like I mentioned above already, I'm just brainstorming, its late, I've got insomnia, and I have to admit I've been dishonest with myself in the past about how good the chances are of a professional women's hockey league starting up anytime soon really are but I'd love it if one did, so I'm thinking outloud and making those thoughts public here to see what others think?
