steven stank. stank score

BLUELINERS 01.01 ″#CAMP”

I was at the Clarkson Cup and it was great hockey.

BUT, but, and I hate to be the bad guy here, I feel like the CWHL is so terrible that it’s sabotaging women’s hockey.

Let’s talk about marketing and promotion.

Some people like to pretend that fans go to sporting events because of the quality of the game and that fans don’t follow women’s hockey due to perceived weakness in the sport. (Not QUITE as good as the men, eh?)

I call bullshit.

Fans go to sporting events because of marketing and promotion. You want to know why cricket is widely known in some countries, but hardly followed in Canada – try finding cricket scores in local media or watching a game live.

Soccer is the world’s most popular sport – why not in Canada? Rugby? Baseball?

This isn’t a comment on the value or quality of various sports – it’s an observation that fans follow the sports (and the specific teams) that our local media promote. Here in Ottawa that means, the Sens, the 67s, the university hockey teams, even the out of town Binghamton Senators, as well as the Red-Blacks, the Fury …

What about women’s hockey?

The CWHL does not market women’s hockey well. Talk about an understatement.

I should be their target audience – crazy hockey fan, active in girls hockey, active on social media, advocate of women’s issues and I didn’t learn about this game until a week before – and purely by chance.

The CWHL does not promote its best assets – the players themselves. There are no interviews with players, no promotional events, no meet-the-player events … Who knows anything about Marie-Philip Poulin? She scored the ‘golden’ goal in the Olympics that won Canada our gold medal – not once, but TWICE!

You cannot buy CWHL merchandise in any store.

The merchandise on the website is specific to the teams – so a girl from Ottawa who wants to support women’s hockey in general is stuck.

There is no merchandise specific to players or that promotes women in sport.

I heard NOTHING about the awards show on Friday night – did they allow reporters in?

As of Saturday morning, the website still said: check back for details, when I wanted to know if there were opportunities to meet players THAT DAY.

I found out that a few players would be at the Museum of History from a tweet – not any official source. I asked a museum representative why it was so poorly promoted and she said, they were doing their best, but they in fact had been given almost no information from the CWHL.

This kind of ineptness is infuriating.

Last week was International Women’s day. A marketer with half an ounce of common sense would have touched base with media – hey, want to talk to our players?

As far as I know, the CWHL did not bother contacting minor hockey associations in Ottawa to get word out. Didn’t offer female players a chance to watch practices, meet the players, participate in ANY events …

Do they understand who their target audience is?

Most of what I’m talking about is FREE publicity, but you have to put some work in.

You have to update your website.

You have to CALL the media.

You have to organize events.

There is a huge capacity in Canada to support women’s hockey – we’re proud of them when we get to see them in international events like the Olympics. There’s no reason to believe that Canadians won’t support women’s hockey – it’s 2016 after all.

But …

Not if the CWHL has anything to do with it.

I think you doubt soccer’s popularity in Canada since simply looking @ the World Cup viewing numbers from 2014 indicates that it is indeed very popular (with 30.7 million people (88.6% of Canada’s population) watched at some point during the tournament), viewership peaked at 7.4 million for the final, in comparison to the Stanley Cup finals in 2015, where it peaked at only 4.6 million during the final game.  more kids are playing soccer. So I mean, just because it’s Canada’s national sport doesn’t mean it’s the most popular sport in Canada.

I’m also not sure how much you followed the league prior to this but there have been a number of instances where players have done interviews with local media, especially surrounding league events. Here’s Natalie Spooner on BT in Toronto for the All-Star Game, and Jacquie Pierri and Brianne Jenner talking about Inferno Keep the Beat on Breakfast Television in Calgary.

The league does the best with what they’ve got. Obviously there’s more that can be done but they are not destroying women’s hockey. Men’s leagues generally have the marketing dollars to put towards buying out ads space. The deal with Sportsnet to broadcast special league games is literally a test for Sportsnet to gauge the popularity of the league. They need to find value in playing these games which is why it is absolutely important for people to tune into the games and attend the games. Mainstream media isn’t going to care no matter how much the league bothers them. They have to show value to them and that people actually care enough to get out to the games when they can. Fans have bothered even the score to add a women’s hockey section for either league and they said there’s not enough interest online to do it. It sucks big time. So as fans we need to tune into the streams and go to the games so they have the numbers to prove to the media that people actually care. They rely heavily on other news sources and bloggers. There has been a lot of coverage done on the league on a number of blogs. Matchsticks and Gasoline has provided coverage for the Inferno, Pension Plan Puppets both the Furies and Thunder, Habs Eyes on the Prize the Canadiennes, and Stanley Cup of Chowder for the Blades, all of whom have provided excellent team coverage throughout the season. Other active sources of CWHL news have been Along the Boards and The Victory Press to name a few. Where your TSN & Sportsnet are lacking, these writers are dedicated to the league and provide wonderful coverage. They have partnerships with 3 NHL team, two of the biggest in the league and only 1 actively engaged their CWHL counterpart on social media prior to Clarkson Cup this season.

Meet the player events happen after literally every home game. The team signs autographs and all the players are very available to the fans who want to meet them after games. The limit of merchandise might have something to do with their merchandiser, it would likely be beyond their control which is why it’s only available online. It would provide them more control over production quantities to limit their loss to their bottom line. It would also have an impact on what they offer out. Obviously it would be nice to have the player t-shirts back but none of us know the details of their licensing agreement so it’s difficult to say why though the availability in stores is very likely production control.

The awards were mentioned a number of times prior from the announcement date. It was covered live by the league on their twitter account. It was open to the public if you purchased a ticket. Practices on community day were advertised as open practices. A number of the players took part in events on ice with local teams in Ottawa. I agree it could have been communicated a bit better but it’s not like they didn’t have some indication as to what they were doing. And they re-tweet tweets with information onto their twitter so it was still there.

The league does the best they can with the resources they have to promote the game, and their league. If you’re relying on mainstream media for constant updates on small or start-up leagues you’re going to be missing out quite a bit. They will show up for the big events like they did at Clarkson Cup but they will not be there during the league until they see value for them.

endless list of hockey faves  2/? - amanda kessel