sunbeam
David Clarke
The Panthers don't do league titles. Not even Carlsberg can manage that!
Posts: 3,862
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Post by sunbeam on Nov 9, 2004 0:20:55 GMT
The potential for this deal is to eventually become an affiliate to the NHL. A working relationship with the NHL could lead to all sort of possible on-ice spin-offs for UK ice hockey. This is a good deal. However its build-up was somewhat overblown as there is no way sports editors will be interested in a deal which sees two websites expand the amount of hyperlinks on their respective sites!! I'm a tad surprised no-one has mentioned the irony of the NHL boasting of how "hockey is a global game [that] continues to grow throughout the world" at a time when its best players are on strike! What a delicious irony that the Elite league has struck a relationship with NHL.com at a time when it is probably getting its least amount of traffic in years. Nonetheless it's a deal of great potential.
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MP
Paul Adey
Hail hurts and rain is cold. Summer in the mountains
Posts: 6,811
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Post by MP on Nov 9, 2004 8:22:37 GMT
I've reflected on yesterdays announcement before coming to any conclussions.
Like many others I was rather disappointed when the announcement was made. I suspect many of us had anticipated some sort of local deal that would have a real and immediate impact on the game and its' fans in this country.
In truth the deal with the NHL is a good piece of work by the EIHL and has the potential to do a great deal of good for the game in this country.
Potential being the operative word. This isn't a five minute fix - it will take a great deal of effort by the EIHL to turn the potential into tangible benefits for the game in Britain. The marketing of hockey here has never been a strong point it seems, let's hope somebody can pick up the opportunities that this link to the NHL provides and move the British game forward.
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Milkman™
Les Strongman
Always Delivers
Posts: 5,300
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Post by Milkman™ on Nov 9, 2004 8:08:33 GMT
This seems to me a move very similar to the one most towns made in the 1950's and 60's, twinning themselves with a foriegn town, so that dignatries could get themselves a free jollieday every year.
What does it do fir the everyday fan on the concousre every week, nothing me thinks. Mr Gates (cos thats who ultimatley owns NHL.com) just gets another load of email addresses and ip numbers to spam whenever he feels the need to want to sell something.
How many people realisticallly use the official sites, not many i would guess if my experience is anything to go by.
As a sidepoint, a few posters have mentioned sports editors in this thread, well i have spoken to 2 this morning and the reaction was less than enthusiastic.
Time will tell, i hope i is proved wrong.
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Post by NevesMetro on Nov 9, 2004 8:40:11 GMT
How many people realisticallly use the official sites, not many i would guess if my experience is anything to go by. And how many actually click on affiliated sites? TBH asking the average Leafs fan to be interested in our league is similar to asking a Man Utd fan to be interested in Icelandic football. I doubt that the Elite website will get many more hits than it does now. Hopefully this deal will get us an exhibition game somewhere down the line or something similar that will create real media interest and therefore introduce a few more folks to UK hockey
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Post by girdeaux on Nov 9, 2004 8:44:23 GMT
And how many actually click on affiliated sites? TBH asking the average Leafs fan to be interested in our league is similar to asking a Man Utd fan to be interested in Icelandic football. I doubt that the Elite website will get many more hits than it does now. Hopefully this deal will get us an exhibition game somewhere down the line or something similar that will create real media interest and therefore introduce a few more folks to UK hockey You'd actually be surprised how many Canadian hockey fans are shocked, but actually interested, when they discover the sport is played in this country NevesMetro & this country is a popular destination for Canadian tourists... Like MP has said, this deal is all about potential at the end of the day
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Milkman™
Les Strongman
Always Delivers
Posts: 5,300
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Post by Milkman™ on Nov 9, 2004 8:45:52 GMT
And how many actually click on affiliated sites? TBH asking the average Leafs fan to be interested in our league is similar to asking a Man Utd fan to be interested in Icelandic football. I doubt that the Elite website will get many more hits than it does now. And as a Man U season ticket holder i can only agree, the only reason i go on their site is for the online programme. Its overloaded with adverts and bloat/spy ware crap.
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Post by NevesMetro on Nov 9, 2004 8:59:24 GMT
Like MP has said, this deal is all about potential at the end of the day Totally agree. That's why I said that hopefully it will lead to something(like an exhibition game) that will create real media attention. Of course there will be a few of our friends from across the pond who are interested in our league. I play a yahoo fantasy game with a guy who was interested to know that we had JC at our club but I doubt that there will be too many hitting our website or our arenas.
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Post by girdeaux on Nov 9, 2004 9:08:11 GMT
Totally agree. That's why I said that hopefully it will lead to something(like an exibition game) that will create real media attention. Of course there will be a few of our friends from across the pond who are interested in our league. I play a yahoo fantasy game with a guy who was interested to know that we had JC at our club but I doubt that there will be too many hitting our website or our arenas. Indeed. The Leaf fans I speak to on a daily basis are always interested in how old Leaf prospects or players do, notibly Craighead & Kalmikov...
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Post by BeerMonster on Nov 9, 2004 9:48:24 GMT
I agree the potential for British Ice Hockey with this news is great (only time will tell), but looking at a few sport pages I can’t see the hold the back page headline news anywhere. It just goes to prove how hard the job of getting our sport media coverage is going to be. At least it’s a start in the right direction
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James
Greg Hadden
Posts: 1,544
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Post by James on Nov 9, 2004 9:51:06 GMT
OMG! I can't believe all the negativity that I have been reading on forums reguarding the news. Ok maybe its not the biggest ever news but it is a million times better than no news!
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Post by Sussex Panther on Nov 9, 2004 12:28:12 GMT
Entirely the fault of whatever passes for the EIHL's marketing team. If this came out of the blue we'd all be saying how great it was, because it is genuinely good news. Instead it's hyped up as something earthshattering that would change the face of UK hockey forever overnight which it most certainly isn't. Very very poor PR work.
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Shaggy
Forum Moderator
Am I a cynical idealist or an idealistic cynic?
Posts: 10,995
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Post by Shaggy on Nov 9, 2004 12:48:18 GMT
Entirely the fault of whatever passes for the EIHL's marketing team. If this came out of the blue we'd all be saying how great it was, because it is genuinely good news. Instead it's hyped up as something earthshattering that would change the face of UK hockey forever overnight which it most certainly isn't. Very very poor PR work. Except for the fact the 90% of the 'hyping' wasn't done by the EIHL at all..... but by us fans.
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Post by Sussex Panther on Nov 9, 2004 12:55:06 GMT
What started the hype was:
If it'd just been announced instead of preceded by a separate press release making such a big deal everyone would have reacted positively to the great news.
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Post by heja on Nov 9, 2004 13:30:16 GMT
it was the EIHL that started all the hype by saying this will be the best thing for UK ice hockey and will propel the league forwards. and also saying that the sports news should save a place for them on monday.
but in the end it wasn't that good and certainly didn't deserve a seperate press release
unless we havn't heard all yet.
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James
Greg Hadden
Posts: 1,544
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Post by James on Nov 9, 2004 14:48:54 GMT
ALL IN YOUR OPINION!
Perhaps it is the best thing for UK ice hockey - there has not been any other major news recently has there?
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Post by Sussex Panther on Nov 9, 2004 16:47:07 GMT
Other than that due to contractual problems some of the world's top players will be playing in the UK this season?
Surely even that's at least as worthy of space from sports editors than "UK league gets reciprocal hyperlinks with NHL's website"? Considering not all of the UK press publishes EIHL results in it's sports sections and fewer yet publish BNL ones suggesting this was something they'd all want to report and implying that sort of news to their fans was totally out of touch.
Don't get me wrong, great that it's been done just a poor job of how the news was released.
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Post by girdeaux on Nov 9, 2004 18:47:23 GMT
ALL IN YOUR OPINION! Perhaps it is the best thing for UK ice hockey - there has not been any other major news recently has there? NHL superstar, Roman Tvrdon signs for GMB Panthers
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RBR97
Jim Keyes
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Post by RBR97 on Nov 10, 2004 0:28:02 GMT
you all seem to be moaning and groaning over something just because you havnt got what you wanted and don't want to really give things a chance and see if anything else happens. surely being linked with the show over there is pretty dam good for the sport over here. - the elite league site and all ajoined sites have now been opened to a larger audience to come see (someone said you can find out about any league with abit of digging but why would americans want to find out about british ice hockey??) going to be a bigger interest in sponsorship if things go smoothly and gets alot of interest, also makes the league seem alot more serious which will probly look good to tv companys (linked to a massive sport in america!!!!) I duno but i got a feeling something like a tv deal is next on the list of things to do for the league. maybe something with nasn and get games on there. as its perfect time to show some british ice hockey on tv while they dont have and nhl to show (also with teams getting some nhl players aswell) anyway i think this is great news for the league and cant see why others dont seem that happy with it
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Helen
Ross Lambert
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Post by Helen on Nov 10, 2004 8:29:49 GMT
you all seem to be moaning and groaning over something just because you havnt got what you wanted and don't want to really give things a chance and see if anything else happens. We aren't moaning! We just said that we were slightly disappointed because the news wasn't as exciting as we'd expected, not disappointed because of what it actually is. As pretty much everyone has stated, it IS good news and we're happy, it's just not quite as good as what we were expecting.
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