Women's Pro Hockey League: too good to be true?

[ARM]

Maybe we are thinking we are realists for the current environment, but it is a little sad that we are the first to shoot down the idea.

Does it help the advancement of the sport if a poor business model is tried and fails? I worry that will wind up being a roadblock to future, better-planned leagues because then there will be this high-profile failure as a negative example.

To me, a Canadian, if you asked me if a WNBA would ever work before it started up, I would have laughed out loud!

Would the WNBA have done as well w/o NBA involvement and financial backing? That is why people think something similar is needed in hockey. The Minnesota Wild sponsor something called "Hockey Day Minnesota" every season. A Wild game is televised, as is a Gopher men's game, and several HS games. No Gopher women or any other female college team, although there are many in the area. The only females shown is a HS girls game on tape delay in the middle of the night. Maybe it is different in the East, but around here, I don't sense a lot of willingness of the NHL to support the women's game. The St. Louis Blues getting involved at Yale in the White Out For Mandi was one of the few positive signs, and that came out of the Jaden Schwartz connection rather than any overall desire to foster interest in women's hockey. The other difference I see is that when the WNBA was launched, women's basketball had been a national sport for a number of years and had a larger following around the country.

I don't think supporting a sport means that you have to blindly answer in the affirmative to any question asked concerning it. I do agree that it will work at some point in the future. I just don't see it as the near future.

 

[driventoit]

Re: Women's Pro Hockey League: too good to be true?

And what would happen to the TEAM game we all love with paid incentives for points?!

 

[Hux]

Re: Women's Pro Hockey League: too good to be true?

This has been brought up before, but for the sake of refreshing memories; The NHL has no interest in putting money into women's "pro" hockey when there is NO return on investment, or charitable goodwill involved. The figures that folks tossed around were better served being used to support the grass roots of the sport..youth hockey, both boys and girls.

 

[CrazyDave]

Re: Women's Pro Hockey League: too good to be true?

I just wanted to point out another sport which has tried repeatedly to develop a legitimate professional women's league in the United States -- soccer.

WUSA -- founded in 2001, folded after the 2003 season
WPS -- founded in 2009, folded after the 2011 season
NWSL -- founded in 2013... results remain to be seen, but the only coverage is online (thankfully free in most cases, per the league's Wikipedia page)

And this is despite the fact that the women's national soccer team gets a lot more media coverage of games than the women's national hockey team, which in turn should draw more interest in the professional league.

 

[WiscDC]

Re: Women's Pro Hockey League: too good to be true?

I just wanted to point out another sport which has tried repeatedly to develop a legitimate professional women's league in the United States -- soccer.

WUSA -- founded in 2001, folded after the 2003 season
WPS -- founded in 2009, folded after the 2011 season
NWSL -- founded in 2013... results remain to be seen, but the only coverage is online (thankfully free in most cases, per the league's Wikipedia page)

And this is despite the fact that the women's national soccer team gets a lot more media coverage of games than the women's national hockey team, which in turn should draw more interest in the professional league.

This is exactly right. This league may be unlikely, but if it somehow happens, it would have to be a Canadian league, not an American one.

 

[ExHockeyguy]

Re: Women's Pro Hockey League: too good to be true?

The WNBA would not have survived without the NBA supporting it financially. It would never have made it past the first year or two. Look at the past, Women's Pro Basketball, Women's Baseball League, Women's Pro Football, Women's Pro Softball League, Women's Soccer, etc. all have had many start-ups and failures. They can't stand on their own financially because even the most fervent core base of fans don't turn out on a regular basis. And with hockey, 20 players, huge support staff, etc. you would need thousands on a regular basis. Gymnastics and figure skating figured that out long ago and do "exhibitions" and "tours" every once in a while that support a very few individuals. Look at how long it's taken the UFC to take in women fighters. Or boxing. The market just isn't there. And to be honest about it, one of the few financially successful enterprises recently has been the LFL (Lingerie Football League), and that league had to take their show on the road to Canada and Australia. It's too bad that the various countries' hockey organizations couldn't band together and form a pro version of the IIHF's Champions League. If on that grand scale 8 or 12 countries could committ finances and players to a "super league" with a "pro level" and a support unit (much like Jr. hockey or ECHL), and have at least a committment of support from the NHL and KHL, then we might have something.

Other than that, the college game will be as good as it gets, with the worlds and Olympics as cherries on top.

 

[Hux]

Re: Women's Pro Hockey League: too good to be true?

It's too bad that the various countries' hockey organizations couldn't band together and form a pro version of the IIHF's Champions League. If on that grand scale 8 or 12 countries could committ finances and players to a "super league" with a "pro level" and a support unit (much like Jr. hockey or ECHL), and have at least a commitment of support from the NHL and KHL, then we might have something.

Other than that, the college game will be as good as it gets, with the worlds and Olympics as cherries on top.

Well, unfortunately, most of the programs that are part of the IIHF have to fight tooth and nail for every penny they receive from their NGB.

 

[FredsDeadFriend]

Re: Women's Pro Hockey League: too good to be true?

Just refreshing this topic, since Pro women's hockey is being discussed in the Sochi Topic.

Personally I think any Women's Pro Hockey league would have to be very small, 4-6 teams, they'd have to play during the summer and I have a strong feeling each team would need some very strong if not blatent ties to a college team so as to benefit from those school's already established fan bases. Summer is the only time, for example, that Minnesota hockey fans would have any time for another hockey team, for in the winter there is either the Gopher Women's team, the Gopher Men's team and/or the Wild. And I'm not sure a lot of hockey fans would prefer baseball to hockey,
But...

talk has been that a pro women's league would need financial support from the NHL and that could be true. Personally I think the NHL should view it as an investment in its own future, if they can help establish some pro women's hockey teams somewhere where it would help their future earnings if they got more people in this country enjoying hockey, and I'm thinking of places like Souix Falls, SD or Iowa maybe?! I've heard Las Vegas mentioned and that wouldn't be the worst place to have a team. I think the NHL needs to look at the United States as its future, and it needs to expand and drum up interest in areas of the country that are growing in population but maybe haven't gotten to the point that they can sustain a full on Men's Pro Franchise.


Just some thoughts.

 

[ClOuD 9]

Re: Women's Pro Hockey League: too good to be true?

I just wanted to point out another sport which has tried repeatedly to develop a legitimate professional women's league in the United States -- soccer.

WUSA -- founded in 2001, folded after the 2003 season
WPS -- founded in 2009, folded after the 2011 season
NWSL -- founded in 2013... results remain to be seen, but the only coverage is online (thankfully free in most cases, per the league's Wikipedia page)

And this is despite the fact that the women's national soccer team gets a lot more media coverage of games than the women's national hockey team, which in turn should draw more interest in the professional league.

^ This. The women's national team not only gets more media coverage, but draws near NHL levels at the gate. And the number of females <a href="http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/media_kit/keystatistics/">playing soccer at the youth level</a> (2008: 1,511,094) blows hockey out of the water.

USWNT attendances 2013
US vs Scotland; Jacksonville, FL - 18,656
US vs Scotland; Nashville, TN - 14,244
US vs South Korea; Harrison, NJ - 18,961
US v Mexico; Washington, DC - 12,594
US v Australia; San Antonio, TX - 19,109
US v New Zealand; San Francisco, CA - 16,315
US v New Zealand; Columbus, OH - 15,139
US v Brazil; Orlando, FL - 20,274
Average: 16,912
(I removed the US vs South Korea in Foxboro as it was a double header with the New England Revolution)

 

[dave1381]

Re: Women's Pro Hockey League: too good to be true?

I've just copied many of the posts on this subject from the Olympic thread into this thread, part 1 of 3.

Noora Raty says she'll retire unless she can find somewhere to play professionally: https://twitter.com/Nooraty41/status/434713234432487426/photo/1 (tweet)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BghpYi6CcAAX7W4.jpg (picture of statement)

Forgot to mention, addressing one of Raty's points, the guy who runs the scrimmages told me yesterday, as he has many times in the past, that lots of his skaters play in the minor "pro" leagues and get paid $250-500/week (try getting by on that) and as a result when they return home in the summer they have to get a job to attempt to make ends meet. So, I guess there's getting paid and getting paid. Their situation is not far removed from what the CWHL players' experience is, as Raty alluded to.

onion.com/1nLhjxQ

It's a nice critique of chauvinism (though it could also be read as a critique of those overzealous in their criticism of chauvinism). Regardless, I don't agree with some points stated the article (regardless of whether their meant to be taken seriously or not).

I don't think women's sports attention in the Olympics suffers from a massive problem of chauvinism. That's the time when fans are most willing to pay attention to Olympic sports. Canada-U.S. women's preliminaries got more CBC viewers than the U.S.-Russia men's game, so Canadians are generally pretty open-minded when it comes to the kind of hockey they watch. People will pay attention to high-profile women's events like Olympics and Women's World Cup in soccer. It's everything else that's more the problem.

Actually, I think the average sports columnists covering women's hockey have been far more chauvinistic than their readership... though it's gotten much, much better recently, many more columnists defending women's hockey now.


And I don't see chauvinism as the primary obstacle to successful women's pro sports. Even if you were to eliminate it, you still face the problem of building a fan base and history against leagues that have decades of building a fan base and history.

Here's another (saner?) voice for a women's pro league: http://www.mndaily.com/sports/womens-hockey/2014/02/17/column-its-time-pro-womens-hockey-ya-feel-me

Saner, but off the mark in my view:


I don't think it's very chicken-egg. Media usually will write about new leagues. If people don't show up, then the media stops covering it. The idea that women's sports would do better if media just treated it fairly is totally naive. The 2001 WUSA had about as much media hype as you could imagine and TV coverage on TNT and still didn't survive.

Is women's college attendance up across the board???? My sense is it peaks when teams first get some special players: e.g. 1999 Harvard, 2004 Clarkson/SLU, 2007 Mercyhurst... then levels off a lot.

The idea that people will simply "pay for a good product" where product means the quality of the players is total nonsense. Olympic women's hockey is a good product. The Olympic women's hockey players playing in a new pro league with no prior fan base or history is not a good product. This isn't just a women's thing. New men's leagues struggle mightily too.

 

[dave1381]

Re: Women's Pro Hockey League: too good to be true?

I've just copied many of the posts on this subject from the Olympic thread into this thread, part 2 of 3.

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.

Now, I think when we're talking about success in women's sports, we're missing something by ignoring the WTA. Obviously there are huge differences since tennis is an individual sport, but the WTA is notable in that it has leveraged established brands like Grand Slams into women's only tournaments throughout the year that have done well. One appealing feature of this model is that when a WTA Event comes to town, it's an EVENT that only happens once a year, and it gets a lot of media coverage and attention. And you're able to attract a core of fans who are willing to consume a fairly niche product of women's tennis in bulk that one weekend.

This is a totally crazy idea I thought of yesterday, but let's say you have six pro teams, tied to the original six NHL cities with Minneapolis replacing NYC. But instead of a typical sports league, you have them tour the six cities together, once in the Fall, and once in the Winter, and have tournaments each weekend with 3 games each on Friday-Saturday-Sunday (9 games total). Then you aggregate the results from the 12 tournaments to determine playoff teams, and you do best-of-three series at higher seeds for semifinals one weekend and championship for another weekend.

What I like about the approach is every time the top 120 players in the world come to your city, it's an event, that can be promoted, rather than having scattered games throughout the year at odd times. You can time these tournaments during road weekends for NHL teams, and avoid schedule problems that force the WNBA into the summer. You can also structure the timing Boston->Montreal->Toronto->Detroit->Chicago->Minneapolis to minimize a lot of intercity travel costs. I see the biggest problem would be the costs of keeping 120 players & staff on the road most of the season, but that is pretty much what tennis players do, with much worse intercity travel costs.

So it's a totally out there idea, but clearly what most new leagues are doing now doesn't work, so it's worth trying to think totally outside the box.

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?

 

[dave1381]

Re: Women's Pro Hockey League: too good to be true?

I've just copied many of the posts on this subject from the Olympic thread into this thread, part 3 of 3.

dave --

Seems we are both up late and contemplating different ways to make Pro Women's Hockey work, lol. I actually had a different version of your idea in my head as well, but didn't want to add it to my post as it would have gotten too lengthy and I figured I could post that idea at a later time if no one else did. I may still do that?

But I love the fact that you are thinking about it, same as me and same as many other women's hockey fans out there.

Biggest difference between your idea and mine is the time of the year. I think a women's professional league would have to shoot for games during the summer. Think about it, people might love the idea of getting away from the summer heat by going into a cooled off building to watch some ice hockey?!


But I have to say that your idea that it might be best to make it into an EVENT is a good one.

I don't think it's so crazy.

I've had countless conversations over the last few years with the guy who holds the scrimmages in our area that I've mentioned about this very idea. The packaging has to be different than regular league play and, using this concept, when the tournament comes to town it would have a better chance of attracting good crowds because it would/should be "sold" as an event, a travelling show similar to what Dana White does with the UFC.

Deals could possibly be made with television networks, hotels and airlines etc. etc.. But the key would likely be to start small with a few teams in one regional market to test the validity of the concept and if it worked well enough in the first year or two then, with sustainable growth, expand the number of teams and the number of markets...sort of like the cluster concept being utilized in Sochi to house all the venues. Then if it worked up to that point you could grow into having playoffs (tournament style) between the teams representing the various markets/clusters.

But I think that the important thing is packaging as in "the event is coming to town next Saturday and we don't know if or when it will ever be back" as opposed to being able to go to a game whenever you felt like it during league play...and if you missed one, well, that's not such a big deal because they play again in a few days.

Dave, professional tennis players are individually responsible for travel, meals, and accommodations. They are paid an appearance fee by the tournaments that are sponsored by the likes of BNP Paribas, AT&T, IBM, etc... but all of their out of pocket costs are born by the player. In order to make your idea work, you would have to have corporate sponsorships in addition to ticket sales, apparel sales, other marketing such as appearances with youth and club teams, and I'm not sure the money would make it profitable. Look, even the WNBA is having issues. The Los Angeles Sparks just laid off their entire front office and staff because they can't make it work financially. They have coaches and players but no admin or front office. How crazy is that?

I applaud what the Blues did in supporting Jaden Schwartz for his sister's fundraiser at Yale. That was a classy act. But asking other NHL teams to get involved won't fly. They had enough trouble coming together on a collective bargaining agreement. I can't see them extending themselves for women's hockey. A shame really.

I think you have to start with boys and girls tournaments played at a single venue to give the girls some exposure and teeth. Unfortunately it can't work in college hockey but can you imagine a HE men's and women's tournament at TD Garden? That I believe can start to get women's hockey some traction.

 

[dave1381]

Re: Women's Pro Hockey League: too good to be true?

Re: FredsDeadFriend -- I don't have a clear idea of whether Winter or Summer is better. I do think you're absolutely right that a traditional women's pro league wouldn't work right now opposite the NHL right now. I do think a big women's hockey EVENT in traditional NHL cities once or twice a year when the home team is away could conceivably work during the Winter season. I think the WNBA suffers a lot from being at a time when most people aren't thinking about watching basketball.

Re: Blackbeard -- glad you feel the same way. I agree that the only viable models for new leagues barring special circumstances are minor/regional leagues and these more Tour/Event like models that tennis uses.

Re: Skate79 -- I agree I don't know whether my proposal would be profitable. What I'm mainly asking is what the best possible would look like. I think the most successful women's sports product to be introduced since the 1970s is the WTA, so I think it makes sense to try to find good features of the WTA model that can be replicated and not try to copy features of the NBA/NHL/NFL/MLB which many leagues men's and women's have tried to do and failed.

As for sponsorship, sponsorship will come when you get fans. In the meantime you find out how to get fans and minimize travel costs. And obviously a big national league needs sponsorship too. Going from a traditional league format to a tour/event format doesn't change that.

I completely disagree that putting the Women's Hockey East tournament in the Garden would be a success. If you put women's hockey in the Garden, it has to be the best the World and feature players well known from a recent Olympics.