A friend of mine, Doug Porter, is a marketing consultant based in Prague who makes frequent trips to Moscow. He was there this past weekend and watched Game 2 of the Capitals-Canadiens series at Hot Dogs — a sports bar that is open 24 hours a day. That’s a good thing, because the game started at 3 a.m. local time and ended just around 6:30 a.m.
In a Skype conversation, Porter told me there were plenty of fans rocking the red with loud cheers for countrymen Alex Ovechkin, Alexander Semin and Semyon Varlamov.
According to Porter, Europe has gone “hockey crazy.” In checking with ESPN America — which handles the distribution of the NHL games throughout the continent — he is right. Despite games starting at 3 a.m. and 7 a.m., respectively, for NHL doubleheaders, fans from London to Moscow are viewing the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs in record numbers.
In Stockholm, Nicklas Backstrom has plenty of fans filling Anders Limp Bar, Café Dello Sport and O’Leary’s — the top sports bar in the city. Megan, a bartender at O’Leary’s, told me by phone “we have a packed bar for the hockey games and yes, we all love Nick. He is the best.”
The NHL is one of the hottest properties in TV sports. The following networks each have deals with the league: Sport Klub is in Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro; ASN is Pan-Asia; ESPN America is Pan-European (including Sweden), NTV Plus & Via Sports East is in Russia. ViaSat Sports is in the Nordic nations (including Sweden).
Live games distribution reaches 139 countries/territories and more than 100 million households — including over 50 million households in Europe and Russia.
There also are some interesting numbers from the NHL on their international following. Fan interest in the NHL outside North America: For the first six days of the playoffs, unique visitors to NHL.com from Russia have increased by 82 percent, Slovakia by 116 percent and from Finland by 39 percent.
Meanwhile, on the local front, Game 1 of the Washington-Montreal series on CSN-DC earned a 5.1 overnight rating, a 55 percent increase over last year (3.3). Game 2 earned a 4.4 overnight rating, a 132 percent increase over last year (1.9).
Washington fans visiting NHL.com for video streams are up 23 percent over last season and those Caps fans in Baltimore are up a whopping 53 percent over last year — making it the second-highest rated non-NHL market behind only Kansas City.
Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer. Check out his blog, Watch this! on washingtonexaminer.com.
