Baseball season is upon us, if you couldn’t tell by our recent article about the Washington Nationals having an Alex Ovechkin bobble head giveaway. The MLB season officially got underway on Wednesday night. The New York Yankees visiting the San Francisco Giants was also the first MLB game broadcast exclusively over the streaming service Netflix.
The game was a marquee event for the streaming service leader’s continued foray into live sports, but it played out like one giant commercial. Such gimmicks included having the disembodied hand from “Wednesday” throw out a first pitch and having famous shirtless comedian Bert Kreschier provided continued, and seemingly unneeded, commentary.
All of this is done under the guise of “growing the game”, but is this a pattern the NHL will want to follow? While the NFL, MLB and now NBA have major streaming rights deals the NHL seems more traditional (aside from a select few games being ESPN+) exclusives. Most games and major league events are still available the old fashion way on network or cable television.
As sports continue to move offline, is this a trend the NHL should embrace? To be clear we don’t mean NHL games being available on TV stations streaming alternative (like ESPN+, Max, Gotham Sports etc.) but streaming services being the only place fans can tune in. The league has long fought for visibility and attention. It’s not so far removed from memory playoff games were banished to the likes of places like “the Golf Channel” and now defunct “Versus” few households had (something basketball legend Charles Barkley even joked about when TNT gained NHL broadcasting rights). Moving more of the leagues product to a streaming service would in essence place it behind a pay wall. Wouldn’t that be antithetical to the goal of getting more people to watch?
On the other hand the “old way” is failing. There’s seemingly been non-stop drama with the regional sports network model and their pay structure of media rights fees. It got to the point that some MLB teams, with the league itself, are producing their own broadcasts as a result. Every time the regional sports network model loses influence, streaming only goes stronger. The NHL doesn’t want to join the party when it’s way past the point of being a late adopter.
In the short term the NHL has every reason to stick to the status quo. The league has enjoyed such a strong relationship with current United States media rights holders ESPN and TNT there was talk this season of them working out a pre-emptive extension. The NHL can’t avoid streaming forever. When the time comes to seriously consider it let’s just hope the league maintains the quality of the ice on product. We don’t want games turning into a parade of excessive over promotion like the so-called baseball game that took place Wednesday night.
It might be an isolated incident, for lack of a better word, but Netflix’s MLB broadcast seemingly did more to show off Netflix that to serve baseball fans. If the NHL falls into the same trap fans will sure to be disappointed. Do we really want to see a zombie hand dropping the puck at center ice? We don’t think so, so let’s enjoy the NHL on TNT and ESPN while we still can.