running NHL TV coverage thread

That's why local nets aren't allowed to stream games online for free.

The NHL charges obscene rates for Center Ice and Gamecenter. I love hockey, but I only go out of my way to watch one team. I'd pay a small fee to, say, get NESN's Bruins coverage. I won't pay a large fee to get Center Ice so I can watch 29 teams just so I can watch hockey.

The NHL has done a really nice job of centralizing its online content, but the streamed games and Center Ice cost a small fortune.

One issue the NHL is going to have to contend with is the fact that the pirate streams are circumventing this and getting thousands of viewers a night, which is thousands of dollars of lost revenue. If you badly overcharge for your product, you will create a black market, which some of the pirate sites are exploiting.

 

The question is, are regional networks going to stump up the kind of cash the NHL can make from its Center Ice and Gamecenter packages?

I'm not sure it can, which is why it adopts its current approach.

 

Cool!! We like piracy and black markets that rip off greedy corporate entities and give to the poor. ;D

 

Oh, I'm in on that game too, JJ.

 

Not giving a value statement one way or the other, but the piracy is an issue for the NHL, moreso than it seems to be for MLB (whose online streamed games are much more reasonably-priced, but also includes home & away blackouts for regional teams).

 

doesn't make a rats-ass difference where they are from. It matters who is on the team. If Sidney Crosby or Ale Ovechkin played for the Hurricanes or Lightning, they'd be media darlings, too.

 

I had Center Ice for several years when I wanted to follow one particular team. Didn't get it the last two years and was still getting 4-6 games per week, thanks to NHL Network (which picks up a TON of CBC and TSN games), Versus and NBC.

The whole point of Center Ice, obviously, is to show out-of-market games and charge for them. Just another revenue stream. If the NHL starts giving away the product --- be it over the internet or via TV --- they will have to replace that revenue stream somehow.

 

You mean like the up-to-two-games-a-day that Yahoo Sports was showing for free under the "Hockey Night on Yahoo" brand during the regular season?

 

On a semi-related note, does anyone know who Versus will have doing PBP and color on the Pens-Canes series?

 

I'll let you know. I might be moving down to Lake Norman for the summer since the job market is in the crapper here.

 

I would assume Dave Strader and Darren Eliot. It seems to me they've been the principle No.2 team through the playoffs.

 

Looks like it'll be Joe Beninati and Daryl Reaugh, although I don't have that as 100 percent accurate. Wish it was Strader, as I can't stand Beninati. He's too cartoonish. Razor was outstanding during the Pens-Caps series, so can't argue with that.