The NHL Made a Fatal Blunder in Selling TV Rights to the Versus Network

The Ottawa Senators and Anaheim Ducks will open the 2007 NHL Stanley Cup Finals on Monday. But will anyone outside of Canada be watching?

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) will carry the series, and you can bet all of Canada will be watching the country's past time intently. But what about the American fans?

The Versus Network will be the only American channel to carry the first two games of the series. For those of you still scratching your heads over what the Versus Network is, it is the new name of the Outdoor Life Network, although it still shares much of the same programming: stuff like fishing, hunting, and skiing shows. It took me a while to figure out exactly where the Versus Network came from.

At any rate, many basic cable packages don't carry the network, and for the NHL to ever regain its place as the unofficial fourth "major" sport, the Versus Network simply isn't going to cut it.

When the NHL came off its strike following the 2004-2005 season, Bettman scoffed at a lesser offer from ESPN because he didn't want the league to be treated as a second-tier, less important sport with less coverage. He liked the fact that OLN was willing to put the NHL on its center stage and build a network around it.

But all the move has done is lessened the importance of the NHL in the eyes of casual fans and made the league the butt of every joke by national analysts.

What really doesn't make sense is that the NHL has been trying to take the sport from a regional niche sport popular mainly in the northern part of the country to a national sport by expanding to markets like North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona, yet they were willing to settle for a TV network that offers even less exposure to get the product out to a wider audience.

The Versus Network appeals mainly to the hardcore hockey fans with its expanded analysis and coverage while ESPN would have been better for the masses. Maybe commissioner Gary Bettman tried to appease both crowds with these moves but in the end, he made a bad mistake.