SOS: Schedule - Fan Support

We as fans need to step up if we want the AHL to get better. Let me explain.

This needs to happen more often. And this was in Bridgeport!
Creative Commons: Andrew Gardecki

People need to buy into the AHL so they can get a better product. Think of it as pumping energy into a machine. The more you pump in, the more you get. The more sugar in your system, the bigger the sugar rush.

The Utica Comets in this instance are the ideal franchise. They have a legitimate fan base. The result is they have seemingly worked out a fairly well balanced schedule. They have a better travel budget, they can have better variety of opponents and can diversify their product while still building up rivalries without saturating an opponent. How are they able to do this? Fan support.

The fans bought in, showing it through 17 sell out home games. Utica is on rise and its because of what the fans can do to help galvanize the team, pump money back into the system and demand attention be paid to the way the team is managed and run. And because of that, the organization seems to be listening, and in a year where I am prepared to declare Utica a heavy favorite to win the East, it makes it more important.

And Utica's situation is a perfect example of things I've already been saying. They have rivalries. They have history, to a point. They are in a market that isn't saturated by an NHL team. The home town can call them their own. And it all works perfectly. Utica is so important to that community that it will help drive the success of the community and ultimately help make Vancouver a contender, if the Comets aren't made the more valuable piece of the franchise through whatever championships they win.

But, those factors also worked because of the X-Factor they couldn't control which is the fan support. Fans bought it. If you are an AHL fan, and want your team to succeed, you need to be a maniac about these things. You need to bring friends to games, you need to talk the team up, build up hatred for other teams. Get others to drink the Kool-Aid.

The AHL will be a better product if the fans show that they want one. Just take the leap of faith and let's hope that the AHL reads all the right cues.

Syracuse Crunch and Donald Trump

What the hell did I just watch...

Some sites are calling this a challenge or fighting words, in which case the Crunch are looking to get an early start on their season. Frankly, I would rather call it what this is: Lame. It's amateur showboating to challenge the guy who's such a master showboater the only way he could up his game was to run for president. This whole thing reeks of Jackie Moon wrestling a bear. The worst part is it could have been so much better.

The AHL is spending so much time retreading old Will Farrell bits, and making jokes that are landing way too early and way too late. Come on AHL, you can do better. I know the worst  advice I can give is to say "Be funny" but dammit, be funny AHL. The challenge wasn't nearly bold enough, not outrageous enough.

Take a lesson from 50 Cent on how to do it right, or better yet, take a lesson from me...

S.O.S. AHL Schedule: Marketing

With cable tv, the internet, social media, you would think it would be easy to boost interest and awareness of a product, but part of me doubts that. I think the AHL has a difficult task ahead of itself. The games aren't nationally televised, there is a lot on the internet about the NHL to sufficiently drown out whatever goes on about the AHL, and the same goes for social media. So, how can the AHL garner more attention, increase revenue to better its product? I have a few theories on that:

• NFL strategy: This is the weakest, and most likely to fail, but the NFLs strategy lately. Generate a scandal to draw attention to the league when you aren't watching. Given the off the ice incidents with Patrick Kane and how the media typically receives hockey anyway, I doubt this will work.
  
  
• Get games on tv: Few ways of doing this. Most involve flexing some games to earlier time spots. They all involve giving viewing time of teams away for free because that is exposure, and that is what the AHL wants.

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  Wikimedia Commons

   Local stations, cut a deal, as long as they don't interrupt prime time they would be happy to oblige. Better than the mid-day Saturday reruns they typically have. Plus on local television, it could help amp up interest in the community aspect, which is where love for an AHL team comes from.
  
  
• National TV: Cut a deal with big brother. Broadcast an AHL game of the week on NHL Network, cut it up with the fancy cameras and your prospects get national coverage. It draws attention to the NHL, attention to the prospects and with the big lights and cameras, it helps prospects get used to those big lights.
  
  
• Internet Streaming: I know the AHL does this already with audio and video casts, but you have to pay the premium. I'm saying, don't make it pay per view, but partner with YouTube, Twitch or some other high end streaming service that will do a good job of plugging your games and then you don't ever have to worry about flexing games to earlier times. You get an AHL game of the week that everyone can see, you can hit all 30 teams so everyone can feel that sense of local pride, treat it like an NHL broadcast and give a game or two a week to the people. 
  
  
• Rivalries: Develop them. Hammer home on them. Say how much this team hates that team even if it isn't true and have social media chirping at each other. People buy into dichotomies, Good, bad, winners, losers, heroes, villains.  That is what sells. If you're the Springfield Falcons, I see the fact that the Providence Bruins games are what's selling as a bad sign because it means that they aren't coming to see the Falcons. Build up Hartford with your news paper ads, local station ads, and so forth. Every team, pick two to three and drive up the hate. Social media is perfect for this and its something that occasionally happens, but should happen more often.
  
  

  
• Local Coverage: Work with your local news papers to become a larger part of the news. Develop in the local section, the sports section, opinion and maybe even the front page. Local news websites should be working with you to talk about your brand, secretly promoting it with actual news stories. Be part of the community in highly visible ways and you'll drive interest in hockey. If they present it all in simple ways that make the game easy to understand, you can draw in a more casual audience and convert them along the way as well.
  
  
• Differentiate yourself from the NHL: Sell yourself as a separate product. If NHL is name brand, and you're generic, you can't compete for attention. You have to build yourself as something different, something more relaxed and fun, and take the NHL out of it otherwise the fan bases overlap and local teams in towns under a different the umbrella of an NHL team of a different affiliation will suffer. You're NOT the NHL and that could even be your slogan. You provide hard-hitting, raucous, family friendly, but not too-family-friendly hockey like your grandad always talked about. It's a fan experience unlike what you get in the NHL, its more base, more raw, more intense for less money. The NHL is still the elite experience, but the AHL can be the every day working man experience communities should love.

S.O.S. AHL Schedule: Support

I have four think pieces lined up for basically the things that need to happen for the AHL to save its scheduling issues and help. The first I'm going to tackle is the Support the NHL offers the AHL teams. Admittedly, I am not an insider, I am working on a lot of assumptions here so I will gladly be wrong about these opinions, but its just thoughts I'm throwing out in the little free time I have.

The biggest of my assumptions is how controlled the AHL teams are by big brother. I feel like there are aspects of control, but its clear, to a point, they are left to their own. They deal with their schedule, have to figure out how to make the money, and have to work within the restrictions of the NHL to do so. So that's fine.

Where I am more hazy is the financial support the NHL provides, particularly in regards to supplemental  budget. Do the AHL teams have their own budget? Certain players are signed to 1-way contracts that only leave them attached to an AHL team, I think? The relationship as a whole is an easy one to understand, but as a business strategy, the video I talked about in this blog makes it seem more complicated than, maybe a pool of funds.

So, there are two scenarios to consider. The first is that its all one pool, in which case, the NHL affiliate can offer more to help alleviate costs related to travel. This is ideal in the sense that then, the restrictions that the affiliate team can better mimic the professional hockey season, and also send teams further with the expectation that greater competition at one level will increase revenue at that level, and then increase revenue at the other levels.

However, the AHL is considered a separate entity. They have their own league offices and restrictions. That makes me think, part of the AHL teams success might be driven by the teams themselves. If that's the case then the AHL would be all by itself and that might make it more difficult.

I don't get that is entirely the sense, but if it were, than the NHL should be providing a level of financial assistance that would help offset travel costs. Whatever the case can be, it could be more. While the AHL may not be as bankable (and certainly could sell itself better), further financial assistance, and saturation of hockey beyond the national TV level, could go a long, long way in Hockey's success for the future, not just because of the monetary value.

The final point that I think needs to be made, and I've already have half-way made it is that the NHL should be taking a greater hand helping to plan and and organize this schedule. It should be balanced, it should be driving competition, and should be driving rivalries. That is something the NHL in particular has excelled at. I laugh when I look at rivalries in other sports. I may hate another team, but those teams are limited to those I hate in the NHL as a Bruins fan, and also to the extent of how much I hate them. Granted, that has a lot to do with how the teams play each other, but the fervor can only carry so far, and balancing that can help sustain a rivalry.

To a certain extent, the AHL should be free to dictate how it runs its business, but at a certain point the NHL should want to help guide the AHL through financial support and direction to help make its products better.

Schedule Dissection Part 2: The Traveling.

As I am trying to dig deeper into the AHL, I'm finally getting into the media aspect, This is more along the lines of the things I would like to get into, especially once the heavy lifting get out of the way, but more or less, about a week ago, Falcons TV posted this video:






This relates back to my schedule blog way back when, The video is pretty dry, and goes over a lot of the technicalities of how the schedule comes together. It sounds like a logistical nightmare. I mean, did you see this board?

Look at that thing. Its all yellow squares and black stars and orange circles, maroon hexagons, green hexagons, blue trapezoids scattershot over magnets and squares. John Nash himself would walk up to that thing and go, "Oh, screw this." I mean, don't they have an app for this yet?

But aside from that, there are a few key issues I think its worth touching upon really quick.

1. Scheduling is important for competition and marketing of the team. I think there are ways the AHL could market itself better, and hey, different blog for a different day, but this goes right back to what I said before: The schedule needs more balance. The limitations for travel expenses put a huge hit on this but if the schedule is more balanced, it gives those divisional rivals more meaning and make the games more important. Yes, more people will want to see the Providence Bruins if they live in Springfield because they are probably Boston Bruins fans, and so forth, but too many games against one opponent and there's less urgency to go to it. For thirteen bucks, you can catch them the next time they're in town.

2. Dove tailing off of that, AHL might be spreading itself too thin. With less teams local, that means travel expenses go up, and that makes it hard to fit in the rest time, get greater opponent diversity, and build that culture of rivalries that get people to the games.

3. The NHL puts on tough restrictions. Here is what I don't get about that, they have to regulate the rest and the games per week, which is good for a player but what about player development? Wouldn't a schedule more similar to the NHL, though perhaps less intense, be infinitely more beneficial  in the long run?

4. The AHL probably needs a little more oversight. I may be reading into this too much, but the impression I got was the teams draft their opponents and then the pieces get tied together. What could probably help with this is some better regulation. I get budget constraints but if the product is suffering because of the schedule, those budget constraints will only get tighter.

But, this is all leading to the four things that need to go better to fix the scheduling problem:

1. NHL needs to better support their affiliate.
2. AHL needs to do a better job at selling itself.
3. AHL fans, NHL fans, hockey fans and general public need to do a better job of buying in.
4. AHL has to take some risks to get a better product so #3 is more sustainable and successful.

There will be more on those points soon. Trust me on that one. 

Market Saturation

Move the Marlies.

Move the Barracudda too.

Move any team that operates in an NHL city. Doesn't have to be too far. Just far enough. Let another township have a claim on a team and foster a sense of community pride. Let that team help foster an economy and mean more to that community than it could do in a place where everyone is all glossy eyed for the NHL stars.

Chicago has won the cup 3 times since 2012. Do you think anyone would there would care if the Wolves won the Calder Cup? Do you know who would? Peoria. Davenport. Naperville. Smaller cities that would love to see some hockey. While San Jose, Toronto, and Chicago all might be very large markets, with a huge appetite for hockey, the teams there will always play the second fiddle to the big team. They won't be stars but supporting actors. They are affordable alternatives to

I may not get the economics of it, but there are plenty of states and cities whom could do well for both the AHL and NHL to have access to hockey. Sixty teams across the United States and Canada, with plenty of states getting double or triple duty for hosting means those sports markets have to choose a team to cheer for. But a state like Idaho? North Dakota? Montana? Delaware? They have 0 sports teams to cheer for, so why not have teams there to make heroes of your players rather than stand in the shadows? Why not have your team be a marquee event rather than the "affordable" discount option? Wouldn't having fans that actually care about the team do better to train the players for the pressure of the big league more so? Drive them to be better so they can bring pride to the smaller cities they represent?

The AHL does a great job with this in general, but there are a few teams with serious over lap that could do better to be be somewhere else. At least its something worth considering for the inevitable expansion...

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there are no markets suitable to foster better growth. Maybe the teams are most profitable where they are right now. I just have a hard time buying into that form of market saturation for teams within the same sport.

2015-16 schedule

On August 27th, the new schedule was released.

First impressions: yeah, its a schedule.

Some things to be aware of is the new divisions and how they seem to work out. They do have games every day of the week with the lions share will be on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. No Monday games until December, so if that's your day off for the week, it might be harder to get to a game. Also, the new divisions don't seem like as much of a factor. I did an in depth look at the Falcons schedule and see that they face Hershey four times vs Providence fourteen times vs non-divisional rival the Albany Devils six times, and Hartford Eight times, and some eastern conference team no times.

I don't think its in the best interest of the league to have a team playing a non-divisional opponent more than a divisional one. I understand that there's travel times and expenses that have to be moderated, but the beauty of divisions is the rivalry that builds in the hunt for play-off spots. I want to be able to see those teams go at it more because I want to believe that they have to hate each other more. They're competing for the same glory and are in larger competition for the same spots in the play-offs.

Some that is probably coming from the understanding of how NFL scheduling works, and not necessarily AHL scheduling, but fanaticism is driven by common enemies. In the NFL you know the teams you have to hate. The AHL, I have an idea of whom they may want me to hate, but are Falcons fans really supposed to hate Providence six game more than Hartford? Or Syracuse as much as Hershey? Divisions would be a great idea if the AHL just used them properly.

In later blogs I'll get more in depth with teams and dates a casual fan might want to target for the best or at least most interesting action. They will all be rendered moot probably by mid season when the thugs and contenders are more clear. I know I'll be going to the first game for the Falcons on Oct. 10. Probably the only time I'll get to see Hershey in action.