Stephen Ilagan's Blog

With the end of an NHL lockout that was dubbed the “dumbest lockout in professional sports history” by Vancouver Sun columnist Iain Macintyre , the logical thing to conclude would be that the NHL would have to work extra hard to bring back fans who have made their anger felt throughout the lockout. After all, following the 2004 – 2005 lockout, the NHL invested into several nation-wide commercials such as the one below:

Following this lockout, however, there have been no such national promotions, despite the feeling this lockout supposedly angered the fans much more than the last one. In fact, the only national commercial concerning hockey has been Nike’s “Hockey Is Ours”, which implies a subtle emotion of anger towards the league.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ4JTjFcU7Q

And despite all this, of the 15 opening weekend games, 13 sold out. It seemed as if all the anger disappeared. How could there be such a drastic shift in consumer attitude from an emotion of anger towards the league to an emotion of elation with so little push from the league? My theory is that fans saw the league and each team they support as two different entities / products. Fans are quick to point the blame of the lockout on league commissioner Gary Bettman. Their attitude towards him is still one of hostility, as fans believe he started the lockout, therefore they feel contempt towards him, and actively voice their displeasure. Their teams, however, are a different matter. For many loyal fans, some of which have been season ticket holders for multiple years. All throughout the lockout, Union leader Donald Fehr portrayed the players as victims in the whole process, feeding fans the idea that the players that they follow and adore are suffering as much as they are. Smartly, the NHL left most of the marketing initiatives to the individual teams to carry out local promotions among their fan base. It seems like it has worked wonderfully. The league recognized that fans still retained their endearing loyalty to their teams, so that was enough to compel them to buy tickets in a surprisingly successful opening weekend. Ironically, despite a negative attitude toward league’s top brass, the NHL still found a smart way to take advantage of the subtle difference between team and league to set off what is bound to be another strong (albeit shortened) season.