NHL ratings

It seems that every year consistently the NHL has the lowest ratings among the four major sports in the United States. I am a hockey player and a huge fan of hockey. I have a bias towards hockey I watch every chance I get and it blows my mind that people do not enjoy watching the game. However many people I talk to say they have no interest in watching hockey. One problem that many people have is the game is to fast and hard to follow on TV. Well the problem with that is, is the incredibly low amount of exposure the sport has in the U.S. I believe if hockey were covered more in the news it could spark more interest throughout the public.

If you watch espn you might get a quick recap of maybe 1 minute of last night's games, and the occasional goal or save on the highlight reel. The NHL plays on the versus network, Versus is the cable network that broadcasts hockey games throughout the country. The problem I have with this is that versus is "The NHL Network" however "The NHL Network" plays hockey two nights a week. I understand that it is due to the fact that hockey continuously has low ratings, but in that case do not call yourself "The NHL Network". The NHL has channels you can subscribe to for a price on cable such as NHL centre ice, and NHLTV in which you can watch games and news all day. With the low exposure of the NHL in the U.S. it is hard to spark any interest for people to go out and subscribe to those channels. By this it will continue as a cycle, no interest no ratings.

I am a flyers fan, and when I talk to fellow philadelphians about the Flyers I seem to get the same responses every year. I'll watch when the playoffs start, or I'll start watching when football is over. This is something that I will be interested in looking at now that football is over. I will want to compare the first half ratings to the second half ratings. I was looking at the ratings for the NHL on versus and they have slightly increased each year unfortunatly are not where they should be.