NHL: Why the NHL Should Not Abandon Non-Traditional Hockey Markets

May 15th, 2012 by Brad Berry Leave a reply »
One of the biggest misnomers around is that an NHL franchise cannot succeed in a non-traditional hockey market.

A prime examples supporting this claim is highlighted by the former Atlanta Thrashers and their current ownership woes. It is true that hockey has a natural disadvantage in those markets because of the locals being unaware of the game of hockey, but the prime reason why a team like the Thrashers failed was because Atlanta was the wrong kind of non-traditional hockey market.

What do I mean by Atlanta being a bad market?

The Thrashers had one main factor going against them, there were too many other teams in Atlanta. The city all ready had an NBA, NFL, and MLB franchise before the Thrashers were formed, and because of the stiff competition from more well established franchises in the area, compounded by the fact that Atlanta has a pretty low population compared to cities like Houston, made it difficult to succeed.

A similar situation could be argued in Phoenix, including the fact that the Coyotes don’t play in Phoenix proper, instead in Glendale.

But for every Phoenix and Atlanta, there are towns that have actuall ...

Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NHL
Article written by

Advertisement

Comments are closed.