mikedubc
Washington, DC
Male, 33
I'm the Director of Strategic Marketing of an NHL team. I focus on revenue generation and customer engagement via digital media. My expertise includes strategy, business development, mobile marketing and application design, CRM, online marketing and market research. Ask me anything.
Right now we focus a lot of our efforts on women, children, and more broadly, tech-savvy fans. Our female fan base has been growing immensely and we started a women's fan club to deliver to them specific content and events with a female viewpoint. Youth is a great segment to target to grow our fan base long-term. We have a kids club with tons of events and contests and also have a youth hockey initiative where we partner with local rinks and schools to increase the adoption of hockey in our area. And of course, we leverage technology for the tech-savvy crowd with mobile apps and social networks. It all comes down to knowing your customer base, identifying the trends, and delivering value to those segments.
Absolutely not. The lockout in 2004-05 really hurt the sport but since then the NHL has seen growth in every business and competitive metric. There's little doubt that the NHL is the fourth of the big four major leagues, primarily because it's not as popular on TV as the others, but with the partnership with NBC and their recent merger with Comcast, I believe this gap will shrink.
I don't have anything new to add to your list but the networking aspect is totally magnified. You have to network your butt off to get a gig in sports because the demand for open positions is so high. Many times jobs aren't posted on job boards because hiring managers already know candidates. You would also have to prepare to accept a job with significantly lower pay (unless you are a high-ranking executive).
Most of my co-workers are die-hard hockey fans and their gigs are absolute dream jobs to them. I don't think anyone wants to work an 81-game schedule (not including the pre-season and playoffs) in the MLB, at least I don't. Sure, everyone wants to work in the NFL, both for the fact that it's the most popular league and there are only eight regular season games. But for the most part, my colleagues are completely happy working in hockey.
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What's something you think Apple does surprisingly POORLY?Though HD has been a godsend for the NHL, the league hasn't been impacted as much as the NFL, NBA, or MLB as home entertainment has improved, since it's way better to see hockey live. Nevertheless, we focus a lot of our efforts on the game experience to keep fans happy and coming back. We do a lot of in-game fan engagement, such as text message voting, text-to-screen, intermission activities, giveaways, and contests. We play a lot of music and play a bunch of pump-up videos at certain points of the game to energize the crowd. We treat our games like big concert-like events, not just as hockey games.
The game is frickin fast. Seriously, that's about it. Sure, there are instances where the puck is blocked by the dasherboards on the bottom of the TV screen or by players fighting for the puck, but for the most part of a hockey game, the puck is moving around very quickly on open ice. I think the FoxTrax glowing puck that Fox used for their NHL broadcasts from 1996-98 was the rigth idea to help fans see the puck on TV but apparently this wasn't well accepted by hockey purists. The advent of HD has been a godsend to televised hockey too.
First of all, I like your username. Second, fighting definitely gets the fans pumped up which of course adds to the in-game experience. So I'd say that fighting is good for the game from the marketing perspective.
Sorry to say that for teams with high ticket demand like Philly, it's very unlikely they will ever lower their prices. To achieve an lower average ticket price, I'd suggest buying a partial season package. But hopefully the efforts that the teams are making to improve the in-game entertainment brings up the value of the game experience commensurate to the price.
There was an enter to win contest that we ran where a fan could win a phone call and autographed jersey from one of our players, and that kind of fell flat. I guess we thought the player was more popular than he really was. I can't really think of a campaign that we didn't expect to do much; we likely wouldn't run a campaign if we didn't think it would be successful.
I played street hockey a little bit when I was a kid. Playing hockey, nor being a fan of the team, aren't really requirements for working there. Passion for the game or team may help but isn't necessary at all.
Obviously this is a touchy subject, so anything I write here is my personal opinion and may not reflect what the Marketing team as a whole may do but I think it would be somewhere in the middle of your range. If that subject comes up, it is what it is and we'd of course support that player's decision but I don't think we would try to hide nor push to have it highlighted.
I have no idea what is on Gary Bettman's mind but I imagine that one or more of the southern teams will relocate. Phoenix is an obvious choice, given their tenuous situation over the last couple of years. The Florida Panthers are probably on thin ice (pun intended) as well. I think those two are the most likely to not exist over the next five years, and they'll probably move to Canada.
I have no answer for this one!
Not a dumb question at all. Yes, we do have an African-American player on our roster but we don't highlight him in our marketing and advertising any more than other players. We'll feature him whenever we feel he would work best but nothing out of the ordinary.
Probably a Canadian city like Ontario or something. Tough to say, but it ain't gonna be in the South, I'll tell you that much.
Both sides have legit gripes and you can say that both and neither are being greedy. The owners are billionaires, but many are losing millions every season. The players are millionaires but they would essentially be taking pay cuts. It's an ugly situation but it needs to be fixed.
Personally I didn't but our Media Relations team did. And that job is even tougher when you have a lot of foreign players where english is their second language. It makes for some fun interviews and voiceovers.
I'd say it's harder, especially for the teams who already had issues moving tickets. Fans are pissed off at both the owners and the players and many of them will refuse to pay for tickets. The avid fans will still be there, and the casual fan probably won't change much, but I think many of those in the middle may be lost.
Similar to the question about the players being greedy, it's tough to say who was more reasonable or greedy during negotiations. In terms of revenue sharing, the owners had the worst deal of all major sports leagues and that was a primary reason so many were losing money, so they had to fight hard for that. And the players basically would have had money taken away from them, so I don't blame them for fighting for that, either.
Nope, I wasn't a fan of the team. I was actually a fan of a rival team when I was a kid but lost interest in hockey along the way. It didn't take long for me to turn into a fan of the team and hockey again.
I'm not saying that no one in the NHL uses steroids but the league definitely doesn't have a problem. It's just my opinion but I think the benefits that steroids provide aren't as valuable to a hockey player as they are to a baseball or football player.
It's possible but I don't think it will. There's enough interest in the sport to keep it as one of the big four major leagues, but it's definitely the most susceptible of the four, because so much interest is driven by the teams in Canada and in the North.
No, appreciation of the franchise value is not taken not account. They lose money on the income statement.
I don't think he has much longer as Commissioner.
No idea, that some legal shit that I try to avoid like the plague!
Yeah, this isn't good for the sport at all. It took at least four or five years to rebound from the last lockout in 2004-05, and who knows what will happen now. It really sucks because the NHL was doing really well before this happened. Everyone does lose!
I wonder the same thing. I guess it comes down to workload. During the season, there are so many things going on that you can never get to everything you want to do. You would think that the labor agreement would take priority but who knows why it doesn't.
I suppose they could dip into the AHL ranks for replacement players if they had to but it obviously would really hurt the quality of play.
It depends on a bunch of factors like team (market), placement of the dasherboard ad, whether it's packaged with other ads, etc. but it could range from $50k to $150k.
I got my BS in Materials Engineering (useless), MS in Industrial Engineering (still use a bunch of concepts) and an MBA in Marketing (very useful). Obviously the MBA is the most useful and applied directly to my job.
Philly fans are always obnoxious. Boston fans are annoying as well. I know Canadian team fans are some of the out passionate but I'm not sure how annoying they are.
That's a great part of the game (along with games lasting only 2.5 hours, being the best in-game experience, etc.) but it just never has been an aspect that marketers could leverage, not sure why.
I believe that when both teams receive simultaneous penalties, they actually play at full strength (5 on 5) while the penalized players serve their time in the penalty box, so this question is moot. But I wish they would play 4 on 4 hockey in this situation...it's more exciting!
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