The NHL and its commissioner, Gary Bettman, just keep on trying to sell hockey in the sunbelt. If at first you don’t succeed, try again. If you still don’t succeed year after year, just keep at it. And if you pile up failure after failure, then just double down and play again. Eventually, the odds have to turn in your favour, no?
That’s the prevailing logic that draws many to Las Vegas, where the NHL held its annual gala awards presentation last week. Last year the event was in Toronto, but holding the awards night in a city where it would be the hottest ticket in town can’t compete with the allure of desert glamour, so the NHL decamped for Vegas. They signed a three-year agreement with the Vegas convention bureau, specialists in luring trade shows and professional meetings with discount hotel rooms, cheap food and the prospect of the variegated debauchery that gives rise to the slogan that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
“Las Vegas specializes in shining the spotlight on outstanding performers,” said Mr. Bettman back in March when announcing the news. “Its innate energy offers an exciting setting for our celebration of excellence.”
Last week, NHL visitors to Las Vegas looking for some “innate energy” could have taken in the following shows as part of the “celebration of excellence”: Bette Midler, Larry Gatlin, Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus, Donny & Marie Osmond, Barry Manilow, MCHammer and, yes, Engelbert Humperdinck. Outside of Vegas, that sort of “exciting setting” can be found only on the Indian casino circuit. Casino Rama is just a 90 minute drive from Toronto, but Vegas delivers that little extra that will attract the elusive American audience.
Well, no. I was in the United States last week, and looked for news about the NHL awards. Had I been in Canada, it would have been no problem — the CBC carried it, and TSN had regular updates. In the U. S. A., the NHL has a broadcast agreement with “VERSUS,” a network none of my American friends have ever heard of. Actually to call it a “broadcast” agreement is something of a misnomer, as the audience VERSUS delivers could hardly be considered “broad.” ESPN seemed to ignore the awards altogether.
Then Friday morning I checked USA Today. USA Today is a “newspaper” in much the same sense that VERSUS is a “broadcaster,” but to their credit, their weekend edition sports section is extensive. And there it was, news of the NHL awards, on the bottom of page seven, in an article slightly shorter than the one on whether the United States Golf Association would permit players at the US Open to clean mud off their golf balls between shots.
Mr. Bettman’s big dream was to bring the NHL alongside football, baseball and basketball in the American sports consciousness. That dream-cum-delusion drives his pigheaded insistence that the Phoenix Coyotes must remain in Arizona, even if tickets are given away more easily than virtue on the Las Vegas Strip. So he brought the awards to Vegas, desperately desiring to bask in the down-at-the-heels glamour the likes of Barry Manilow can deliver.
Far from joining the major three professional sports in the U. S. A., the NHL does not even come close to competing for television audiences with college football, college basketball, NASCAR, rained-out golf, or even professional wrestling. Teams across the Sunbelt struggle to make an impact, both financially and on the local sports consciousness. Phoenix is in bankruptcy this year. There will be other candidates after them.
The NHL’s 20-year drive to be a big player in American sports has failed spectacularly. There are likely more Canadians who know who Redfield T. Baum, the Phoenix bankruptcy judge, is than there are Phoenix residents who could name three players on the Coyotes. But Bettman and company are still there, convinced that with just a little more patience, a little more effort and just another few hundred million dollars, hockey can be a success in the desert.
Las Vegas now has the NHL awards. A few years back there was talk of putting an expansion team there. Vegas is not where stars go when they are on the top of their game; they go to Vegas when other places lose interest. Vegas has made its money by offering to visitors the fake, the discounted, the vulgar and the tawdry — for which there is an insatiable appetite in America. It’s where you go when the real thing is too far or too expensive. It’s America’s great refuge for the also-rans and the has-beens. It’s a most suitable home for Gary Bettman’s NHL dreams.