NBC/Olympics Agreement Could Push NHL Participation In Sochi

If you haven’t heard, NBC has retained the U.S. TV rights to the Olympics. According to the internet, reports have said that NBC (Comcast) will pay almost $4 billion for the rights to the Games through the year 2020 (Ha they’ll never make their money back!). 

Great, so what does that mean for hockey?

Well, some fellow suits believe that it means the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia will most likely include NHL players because, make no mistake, NBC absolutely wants the NHL’s participation. At this point, it would just be bad business for the NHL to piss off their own television partner and prohibit their star players from going to Russia.

Now of course this doesn’t mean Bettman will automatically cave and allow NHL players to participate in the games. Bettman has emphasized time and again how the NHL’s involvement in the Games is inconvenient for the league. NHL teams understandably worry that their star players will get hurt or come back for their playoff pushes exhausted from a brutally compressed Olympic schedule.

Capitals Owner Ted Leonsis on his blog noted the NHL has provided more than $2B worth of contracts for players in the Olympics, and he said, “in payment back we received two free tickets to each game per team.” That’s pretty stingy if you ask me. Leonsis also noted NHL officials aren’t allowed to do any press work on site or media streaming in any way.

Ted raises a good point. What if Lundqvist went down during the Olympics? What if Gabby really got hurt? All of sudden the Rangers falter down the stretch, people stop buying tickets, and there is less revenue being brought in. If I am Jimmy Dolan, I’d be nervous about the financial risk. I mean you do have an entire publicly traded company depending on your team’s performance. Can you really risk your business on games you don’t make any money on?

Still, such thinking is short sighted. The NHL received quite a boost in TV ratings and merchandise after the last Olympics. The U.S. involvement most certainly raised awareness among casual sports fans, and if ratings increase and more merchandise gets sold, then of course that impacts an owner’s bottom line over the long term as well.

Hopefully this news pushes the NHL to realize that the Olympics are the greatest promotional vehicle for hockey ever conjured.  Now if we could only get their word that hockey won’t be pre-empted by curling ever again…