NFL and NBA Lockouts May Open Door for NHL and Soccer

This upcoming fall might be challenging for sports fans all over the United States. The NFL has been locked out for 40 days now, and has already seen ugly public battles between players, owners and union reps, failed mediation, court hearings and is currently in its second round of mediation meetings. True progress is yet to be seen.

The NBA is next in line with its collective bargaining agreement ending June 30th with similar battles brewing behind the scenes. 

The NFL and NBA are two of the big three sports leagues in the United States and losing both at the same time would prove to be devastating in multiple ways. Host cities will lose a ton of revenue, businesses around stadiums will lose most of their customers and fans will have nothing to watch.

Actually…

Revenue and business is sure to take a hit, but in reality there will still be sporting events to watch. Most American fans will probably disagree, but change is a good thing.

In the United States lays a huge following of soccer and hockey fans, mostly unknown to the general public because neither sport fills in prime-time broadcasting the way baseball, basketball and football do. The undisputed king of sports news, ESPN, is chock-full of highlights from the big three sports leagues, while soccer and hockey act more as fill-ins, as weather and fluff stories do on the evening news.

Soccer and hockey are excellent, exciting sports and both are deserving of much more attention.

The world of soccer is hot on the heels of a wildly successful World Cup played last year in South Africa, where fans in the United States came out in record numbers to attend broadcasts of the games at bars, restaurants and, most importantly, on their coaches at home. TV ratings for the World Cup were sky-high. Not to mention the fact the United States team was actually good.

According to the Nielson Company, 112 million fans tuned in to the 2010 World Cup, up 22 percent from the 91.4 million who tuned in for the 2006 World Cup. ESPN reported users spent 4.9 billion minutes on World Cup-related digital content during the tournament. To put that into perspective, that’s over 5,000 years of combined time.

With players such as Wayne Rooney, Lionel Messi, Christiano Ronaldo and Andres Iniesta headlining the Cup as well as their respective club teams, you would think this type of attention would generate more coverage. Unfortunately, most of the soccer seen on ESPN came in the spectacular Rooney bicycle shot goal highlights and commercials about “El Clasico,” the name given to every match Barcelona and Real Madrid play against each other. That match is only available if you subscribe to ESPN Deportes.

Hockey on the other hand, is largely considered as the national pastime of our brothers to the north, Canada. While television ratings are not anywhere near as impressive as the World Cup, the NHL is still the premier hockey league in the world. Hockey is an incredible team sport, in need of more airtime to prove that fact to American fans.

The latest speculation suggests some of Russia’s wealthy elite are currently working on building a hockey super league in hopes of keeping Russia’s best talent from joining the NHL. The success of such a league would be devastating for the NHL as some of the league’s top players come from Russia. A much more prominent NHL would surely entice players to stay in the league.

Should there be no professional football or basketball this fall? Absolutely not. However, should both the NFL and NBA cancel their seasons, it is long overdue to soccer and hockey fans that their favorite leagues see the attention they deserve.