Drewcifer
Agent of Karma
This was a topic that was touched on in the Olympic Hockey thread. Would a single European hockey league akin to the NHL be a good thing and could it be done?
Personally I think it would be cool (especially having the Stanley Cup champions play the European champions at the end of the season). For a European league to be competitive with the NHL though it would have to be in markets where the teams could generate as much revenue as an NHL team. NHL tickets are not cheap, here in Minnesota single game tickets for the Wild run between $15 and $75, there are also 60+ corporate suite luxury boxes that are sold on a seasonal basis for very large sums. For a European franchise to compete for players they would probably have to be able to sell 15,000 to 20,000 tickets per game 42 times a year at those prices and have a large enough corporate base to sell luxury suites. A good television contract would help.
So what cities could support such a franchise? The one's that come to my mind are Stockholm, Helsinki, Moscow, St Petersburg and Prauge. Are there any others? Obviously that is not enough.
Personally I think it would be cool (especially having the Stanley Cup champions play the European champions at the end of the season). For a European league to be competitive with the NHL though it would have to be in markets where the teams could generate as much revenue as an NHL team. NHL tickets are not cheap, here in Minnesota single game tickets for the Wild run between $15 and $75, there are also 60+ corporate suite luxury boxes that are sold on a seasonal basis for very large sums. For a European franchise to compete for players they would probably have to be able to sell 15,000 to 20,000 tickets per game 42 times a year at those prices and have a large enough corporate base to sell luxury suites. A good television contract would help.
So what cities could support such a franchise? The one's that come to my mind are Stockholm, Helsinki, Moscow, St Petersburg and Prauge. Are there any others? Obviously that is not enough.