Ted Leonsis vs. SportsTalk 980

I haven’t lived in Washington, D.C. since early 1995, but I follow my old friend Ted Leonsis’ musings on a regular basis. Ted was put off by when hosts of a talk show on SportsTalk 980 as he was headed, along with about 50,000 other people to see the David Beckham vs. DC United soccer match.

Beckham is a star in the international sense, had a movie named after him and married one of the spice girls and that’s the kind of star power we (the aggregate USA star-effer mentality) love.

The hosts on the talk show mocked the people who were going to the game. I understand the mentality: the jacked up attendance for that specific game (probably including Ted) is all because it was an “event” and had nothing to do with a love of soccer. We like the big events. It’s how the system works.

Unless the league can find 3-4 more players of Beckham’s star quality, and they won’t be able to without actually somehow creating the stars, it won’t matter. More to Ted’s real concern is hockey: he owns the NHL Washington Capitals, and has a loyal, but not huge fan base (especially compared to the NFL franchise, the Washington Redskins, but even the MLB and NBA franchises, and even some of the college teams have more of a following locally than the Capitals).

The problem for the NHL, in terms of sheer #’s is its lack of stars. Period. The end. Ted suggests that 980 was foolish for not embracing diversity of all sports leagues, and that it will perish into irrelevancy if it does not.

BIG DISCLAIMER: I love Ted. I’m serious. I have some genuine affection for the guy. He’s smart, charming, and funny and most definitely a “man of the people”, which I think is really cool. He says what he thinks and he’s authentic. I trust him. Plus, he’s been very helpful to me personally. He’s a great guy. But all that doesn’t add up to “he’s always right” and he’s wrong here.

First of all, 980 did cover the event, which I referred to as David Beckham vs. DC United because I can’t name a single other person on the LA Galaxy. I can’t name a single person on DC United either, unless Freddy Adu is still there and I believe the last I heard he was fleeing to play in a country that actually cares about soccer.

I think 980 covered this the way a Sports Talk station should've. They mocked the event nature of it. Sometimes, a part of human nature is that you get a lot more attention by insulting people than you otherwise would. This is a case in point. If they had simply celebrated the event as if it were the second coming of the Beatles, Ted would not have written about it for over the last week. The suggestion that sports talk needs to be diverse, especially in DC is likely folly. I believe 980 would have MORE listeners than it currently has if it said, “From now on, we talk about NOTHING but the Redskins! 365 days a year! All Redskins all the time!” The NFL is a big, big deal. Period. How big of a deal? The NFL DRAFT (yes, the boring ass draft!) was the second highest rated program on non-broadcast television the week it aired in April – edged out by the Sopranos. The NFL draft had MORE THAN THREE TIMES as many television viewers -- just over 5 million as the NHL Finals which had 1.4 million viewers.

The NHL has the same problem as soccer has. Not enough stars. Not nearly enough. Soccer has one. None of the NHL stars have the Q-Rating that Beckham has and only Alex Ovechken and Sidney “Sid the kid” Crosby have any Q-rating with the American public at all and again, not nearly as many people know who those guys are as Beckham and neither of them are in the public’s mind as much as Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr or Bobby Hull. The NHL is lacking good “Bobbys” these days! If the Capitals field a good team and are winning games, making the playoffs, etc., 980 will certainly cover the team locally. But the NHL has the bigger problem of lack of star quality. Even the most casual of sports fans can rattle off five NFL, NBA or MLB stars fairly easily. NHL? Soccer? NO FREAKING WAY.

Mark Cuban suggested to me via e-mail a couple of months back, and I believe not jokingly (though he might have been, I don’t think so) that the NHL needed to get Alex O. and Sid the Kid together with Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. I think Cubes is correct. In the life imitates art department, fictional Entourage meets real life Entourage this week with Entourage star Adrian Grenier who plays Vinny Chase hooking his real-life star to the Paris Hilton gravy train. Paris is looking good by the way, perhaps incarceration is good for the skin.

I believe Ted would be better served by leading the NHL’s charge to somehow market its players to the broader public than solving the problems of a small sports talk radio station in DC. If successful, he will have killed two birds with one stone.

Is The NHL Really In Better Shape Now?

My brother says that in business/negotiations, “he who cares the most usually loses.” Under this theory I thought I could probably win an argument with Ted Leonsis about the NHL because I figured as the owner of the Washington Capitals NHL franchise (and he is a minority owner of the Washington Wizards NBA franchise as well) he is bound to care more than me. I felt like I was in a good position.

But I do not have my sea legs yet, and came out of the communication exchange feeling a little bit worn down and in need of a glass of wine. I give Ted many points for stamina. I also give him a tremendous amount of credit for making himself so accessible to the NHL fan-base (and everyone else, for that matter). I think guys like Leonsis and Cuban making themselves so accessible IS one of the most outstanding aspects of the internet. It’s possible to get guys like this engaged in very interesting conversations. Extremely engaged at times. So I will tip my hat to Ted on that, it’s a great thing.

In fact that’s the reason that I wrote him. I really think the NHL has a great opportunity because while it has lost 50% of its viewers for the Stanley Cup finals in the last 5 years, they were there as recently as 5 years ago. I do worry that more people read Ted’s blog in one month than watched the NHL finals and while that’s great for Ted, I don’t see it as so good for the NHL.

From my perceptive if you had three million homes tuned in 5 years ago and less than half that many are tuned in now, your prospects are worse now than they were before, not better. However…

The world is a wacky place and linear math like that doesn’t always work. As Leonsis himself notes there are now 2000 billionaires. That’s about 10 times as many billionaires as there are sports franchises worth buying. Because of the concentration of capital and the limited supply of sports franchises, we do live in a crazy world where because of the “limited amount of real-estate” property values are going up, up, up, even in cases where the neighborhood is having severe problems (losing half your viewers is a bad day in the neighborhood).

Leonsis points out that from a financial perspective the league is in much better shape now because although ratings were down 50% in 2006 from the 2002 numbers, the league actually broke even in 2006 and lost a significant chunk of change in 2002 when the ratings were much better.

Despite escalation of the underlying value regardless of performance (because of the 2000 billionaires and limited # of franchises), at some point performance still matters. While I agree that breaking even is better than losing money – and I do see that as both an improvement to the business model and improved financial performance, I still am not quite comfortable with the prospects, but I’m focusing on just the problem of the national ratings. Leonsis notes there have been positive improvements and that ticket revenues and actual attendance are both up, as were local ratings for regular season broadcasts.

Despite these improvements, Leonsis agrees that the national ratings remain a big issue. Current deals that have some of the finals on the Versus network really limit exposure (availability to only about 20M of the 100+M tv universe) and hampers both ratings and cross-promotional opportunities.

Though I confess Ted’s explanations do leave me feeling less panicked, I can’t see how the prospects of a league that 1.5 million homes tune in to the finals are truly better than the prospects of something with twice as many homes tuned in. Also, it seems to me that since those folks were watching as recently as 5 years ago, they’re the first people I would focus on winning back. I believe Ted has an opportunity compared to other figures in the NHL because he is out there in the popular culture with a link to his blog from Engadget and everything.

Other than the stars of the NHL themselves doing everything in their power to get face time with the American public (with the leagues assistance), Ted should somehow use his position to do his part to get the 50% back simply because he’s in a better position than most affiliated with the league to have an impact with that.

Is the NHL “really” in better shape now? Ted thinks so, but I’m still not there yet and this year’s ratings (Saturday’s game 3 did a .8 rating with a 2 share during its highest ½ hourly period on Saturday night) of less than a million homes even when the game was on NBC during primetime is not leaving me feel like the NHL is *really* in better shape, even if the franchise values are increasing and the financial performance is better than it was 5 years ago when the average rating was about 3x Saturday night’s results.

I know Paris is in jail, but maybe that’s the best time to approach her with some sort of deal to save the NHL. One thing I think Leonsis is in a better position than most involved with the NHL is really helping put a focus on how to effectively market the stars of the NHL, in fact, I believe marketing its stars is the only way to win back viewers. I see Leonsis as a very determined guy, and if he was determined, really determined to help the NHL market its stars, I think he’d succeed with it.

How Mark Cuban Would Save the NHL

Around the beginning of the year my friend Bill G. pointed me to former AOL executive and Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis’ blog. On the blog Leonsis was bemoaning the lack of season holders who actually lived in DC where the arena is and that most of the season ticket holders were from the surrounding wealthy Virginia and Maryland suburbs. With DC having a huge African American population and with hockey not being especially popular with ANY Americans, let alone African Americans, I thought what he wrote was ridiculous.

I wrote him to say basically that they should be thrilled to have season ticket holders period, regardless of where they lived and that I’d be more worried about the fact that in the popular culture, Hockey isn’t really a part of that. I got especially annoyed with him and was rather hard on him but my reasons were he was talking to me like I was a total dope, “We’re in good shape, the tv stuff will be fine…” etc. I told him I thought he was crazy and that what he really needed to do was make sure Paris and Britney showed up in the stands on TV.

Recently I wrote Cuban asking him for his quick thoughts on saving hockey, and whether it was dead, dead, dead like the 8-Track player of my youth or whether it could be saved. Here’s his response:

"It needs personalities. There is no one in popular culture. Sid the kid and Ovechkin need to get drunk w Paris and Lindsay."

And this is why he’s a billionaire and I’m some guy writing a blog that presently nobody is reading. That last little bit is critical. Showing up on TV isn’t enough. The alcohol IS necessary...for the sex tape that will save the NHL!

Come on Paris, turn your sites to a good cause. Save the NHL!