When it comes to new media and its coverage of the NHL, Ted Leonsis is both visionary and trailblazer, and so it should come as no surprise that his thinking on the matter is anything but static. When “Hockey Night in Canada” came to D.C. a couple of weeks back and profiled the Caps and the team’s bloggers, television viewers caught some snippets of the owner’s new age rationale for embracing the blogosphere. Now there is available the full 18-plus minutes of Ted’s exchange with HNIC’s Elliotte Friedman. [Follow the link to "Hockey Night in Canada," then "Interview," then "Ted Leonsis"] His sentiments are sprawling and savvy and at times startling, and once again, the owner is looking forward:
“We have to be the most new media savvy league and go to where the puck is going to be. I’m not interested in being where the puck is — it’s not that impressive.”
He sets the sporting scene in D.C. in appropriately daunting fashion: “We all live under the spectre of the NFL and the Washington Redskins. We have to find our place. We have one reporter that follows us from the Washington Post. He does magnificent work. I wish there were ten of them, but he’s the only guy.”
“[Tarik] can cover the news, but now having this network of blogs, all of them coming from a different perspective, it helps us sell the game.”
The NHL, with its numerous and ill-fated experiments at improving the televised experience with hockey, must embrace new technology. “Television was our concern 20 years ago,” and it still is today, Leonsis noted. “We’re not going to make it on television.”
Friedman’s piece was well researched. He surveyed all 30 NHL clubs for their respective policies on bloggers. Turns out five or so have blogger friendly policies in place. Three more are considering them. But 17 to 20, Friedman reported, have reviewed the issue and for now have said “no way.”
Leonsis isn’t concerned about the editorial liberties bloggers enjoy or their presumed “lack of accountability.”
“I’m concerned about being ignored,” he told Friedman. “We worked with Off Wing Opinion to craft a Blogger’s Bill of Rights. I take exception [that] there aren’t any standards.”
“I keep hearing we’re going to get burned by a blogger. Oh, like we haven’t been burned by the Washington Post!”
“[Blogs] have become a legitimate media outlet.”
Leonsis emphasized that embracing new media is for the league merely an extension of the relationship its fans have already cultivated, passionately. “All of our fans are wired. They spend most of their time on broadband. They have their mobile devices.”
“People have underestimated the importance of search. They’ve underestimated the influence of Facebook. Facebook has a $15 billion valuation — more than every NHL and NBA team combined. What did they do? They brought a big audience of young Web-savvy customers. We have to look at our business in the same vein.”
So what’s ahead? For starters, the owner contends, increasing acceptance of bloggers and the blogosphere. Additionally, individual blogs that are likely to surpass The Hockey News in popularity and influence. Their quality, he said, “is better than the copy you see in the newspaper.” Then next up comes a very new age role for NHL players.
“Players actually own more of the NHL than the owners do — they get fifty five percent of the revenues. We need to turn players into their own media brands.”
He envisions an NHL with every player on Facebook and Myspace and operating “homesteads” from which they actually sell tickets to the game!
What, you prefer TicketMaster?
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The other outlet where the NHL should keep investing is NHL.com - my seven year old wakes up every morning and wants to know all the scores - he watches game highlights.
On game nights, he finds his favorite game, uses NHL.com to tune into the radio broadcast and then follows each play using the “real time” feature for each game.
All that being said, he loves watching the game on TV whenever he can ….
Does Ted have something against Corey over at the Times? I think his coverage holds its own pretty well. It’s pretty much the only reason I’d ever be seen with a copy of the Times in my hand.
Smitty - I understand how you got that impression, but I can assure you, the Caps hold Corey in the highest regard. I, too, think his coverage has kicked hind quarters this year. Last year, while Corey was learning the NHL beat in a baptism by fire, the Times’ kept him largely in town while the team was on the road. He actually complained about it to me. But this season, I doubt he’s missed more than a couple of games, if that. So I think Ted was perhaps alluding to the recent past, when Tarik more commonly traveled with the team.
We’ve seen this all over the spectrum of sports and it’s especially prevalent with some of the older media relations group. It’s a generational gap issue that will eventually come to a cross as a younger generation grows up and falls into positions of authority.
My parents can’t understand why my brother needs “unlimited text messaging” on his mobile plan because they rarely email and barely use their cell phone. But he communicates with coworkers his age on work-related tasks via text messages, schedules appointments with people, and shares information. Email is “so yesterday” and instant messaging (much like blogging) is where the fresh content is located.
Fortunately we have a majority owner that recognizes the paradigm shift that’s afoot with our younger generation and embraces it accordingly. Too many times the older and more-comfortable folks discount the value of new media.
Doesn’t WSE/Lincoln own a chunk of Ticketmaster?
While skewing toward political blog analysis, this study from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication examines the credibility of blogs; its research favors the positive side:
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/johnson.html
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