THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 5, 1997 TAG: 9701050088
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: THE NHL IN HAMPTON ROADS
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 89 lines
Hampton Roads finally gets a shot at a big-league sports franchise . . . and it's a hockey team?
The National Hockey League - isn't that the bloody-mouthed, fight-laden, step-child of pro sports that is played in Boston, Chicago, Philly and New York?
Used to be. Now it's the up-and-coming, cool-with-the-kids, growing league that plays in Miami, Dallas and Phoenix.
And if George Shinn gets his way, the NHL will be in Norfolk by 2000. Shinn, a businessman who owns the NBA's Charlotte Hornets, has applied for an NHL expansion team that would be named the Hampton Roads Rhinos.
``The whole rink here is going wild over the fact they want to bring an NHL team here,'' says Ray Chaput, retired owner of Haygood Roller Skating Center in Virginia Beach whose son now owns the center.
The NHL in this decade has worked hard to blow up some myths long associated with its game - mostly, that it is a cold-weather sport played by nameless goons and watched by well-off, white, college-educated men.
``You and I both know the criticism that it is the regional prep-school sport,'' says Sandra Carreon, a spokeswoman at NHL offices in New York.
The NHL has also benefited over the past few years from sheer luck. In-line skating and roller hockey have boomed, providing NHL marketers with a handy tie-in for recruiting young fans.
When Gary Bettman became the NHL's first commissioner in February 1993, he came as a marketing-savvy understudy of NBA Commissioner David Stern. Bettman knew the NHL would have to do a better job selling itself: to fans, the media and advertisers.
The NHL has since commissioned studies comparing its fan base to those of other professional sports. In some cases, the studies confirm the league's prep-school image, but those demographics are also the kind that make metropolitan area media and advertisers salivate.
According to a series of studies by Nielsen, The Taylor Group and MRI, commissioned by the NHL:
More people who go to hockey games owned their own $100,000-plus home (38 percent) than fans who attend NFL (36 percent), Major League Baseball (32 percent) or NBA (31 percent) games.
Fans who attended NHL games were more likely to be college educated (49 percent) than NFL (47 percent), baseball (46 percent) or NBA (43 percent) fans.
And in the key demographic group of men between 18 and 34 years old, more people said they were interested in the NHL (38 percent) than in the NFL (32 percent), the NBA (24 percent) or baseball (24 percent).
Of course, there's good and bad to having young fans. The good is obvious: A young fan base means interest in the sport won't soon fritter away. The downside is that young fans generally don't have as much money for high-priced tickets.
The NHL still lags well behind the other three sports in attendance and TV exposure, but some consider it the pro sports league with the most potential for growth. Mike Nichols, editor of Phoenix-based trade publication Team Licensing Business, says the NHL has more room for expansion in broadcast, merchandise and international exposure than the big three.
``All the leagues are growing in certain categories,'' Nichols says. ``The NHL probably has the most room to grow overall because they're building a fan base of young kids right now. They're thinking long term.''
Part of that fan-building effort latches onto the in-line skating boom. The NHL puts on an 18-city marketing tour, called its ``Breakout'' tour, in which the league sponsors an in-line skating competition, says Bernadette Mansur, vice president of communications for the NHL.
The tour will also visit 40 European cities this year, and will add cities to its U.S. tour.
``One of the phenomenons that has really helped in the past four years, which we don't take credit for, is the boom in off-ice hockey,'' Mansur said. ``In-line skating has brought a huge amount of very diverse people into this sport.''
The punky, rebellious nature of some in-line skaters also helps loosen hockey's regional, prep school image. And the oversized, big-numbered, brightly colored jerseys of professional hockey lend themselves well to youthful fashion trends of the moment.
North American sales of licensed NHL jerseys and other products grew from $600 million in 1992 to $1 billion in 1995, according to the NHL.
Starter Corp., the league's top licensee, does not provide sales figures by league but spokeswoman Robin Wexler said, ``Overall, the NHL has been a very strong league for us.''
Also helping stoke interest from young fans, the NHL has developed perhaps the most sophisticated World Wide Web site of any pro sports league on the Internet, Nichols said. Two months after its September launch, the NHL's web site was getting 1.2 million visits per day, the league says.
``We're reaching out to bring young people into this game in every way we can,'' Mansur says, ``because we realize we can't bring every young kid into an arena.''