I have been thinking about piracy lately, though, because I’m considering alternatives to cable television. In truth, hockey is the only thing that binds me to Shaw Cable. I’ve been poking around for alternatives to watching or recording Canucks games on our PVR.
The only legal option is NHL GameCenter LIVE (caution, autoplaying video ahead). Back in October, I could pay $169 to watch nearly any game I want on my computer, iPad or iPhone. They reduce the price throughout the year–it’s currently $119. On the face of it, this seems like a satisfactory offer. I’d rather they amortize the pricing based on the exact day I sign up, but it could be worse.
However, the fine print is pretty hostile to the average customer:
If you want to cancel your subscription after you sign up, you have five days to do so. After that, you forfeit the entire payment.
You only get to watch the first two rounds of the playoffs. It’s not immediately apparent, despite some diligent searching, as to how one watches the subsequent rounds.
Because of league agreements with broadcasters, many games are blacked out. The rules around this policy are pretty inscrutable, though I did read that no games are broadcast through GameCenter in the playoffs in Canada, because they’re televised nationally. There are endless complaints from GameCenter customers on social media and online discussion forums about this practice.
The reviews of the NHL GameCenter mobile app are not flattering. A typical review in the iTunes store reads “Huge downgrade from the 2010 version. It crashes constantly and it’s way harder to navigate than last years version.”
The NHL seems to be about 60% of the way there to a really great service that enables you to watch all games, live or recorded, over the web.
By the way, there are no current NHL (nor NBA, NFL or MLB) games available through the iTunes store. This seems like an enormous missed opportunity.
Clearly, the NHL has not found its iTunes-esque sweet spot. How do I know this? Because there are a ton of illegal ways to watch NHL games online.
There are streaming sites, usually with multiple options for streams of both the home and away broadcasts for any game, and bittorrent sites. But my favourite example is this grey-market site based in Rotterdam, Netherlands that is a generic clone of NHL GameCenter. They essentially offer the same thing as GameCenter, except with more convenience and at a moderately-lower (a year costs US $99) price point. There are no blackouts, no playoff restrictions and the site seems to be more reliable better than the GameCenter app. In short, this shady Dutch operation out-performs the NHL’s own service.
As is so often the case, when the legal options aren’t satisfactory, illegal alternatives abound. There’s clearly a huge appetite for this kind of on-demand sports content. On my site alone, more than 17,000 people have visited this site alone looking for some variation of “how to watch NHL hockey online”. Not everybody wants the all-you-can-eat package for $169, mind you, but that’s the only legal game in town.
We’ve solved online music. We’re making good progress on television and movies. It looks to me like sports leagues, or at least the NHL, still have a very 20th century attitude towards the web. What’s holding them back?
UPDATE: Coincidentally, I was poking around on my iPad tonight, looking for hockey highlights. None of the CBC, TSN or Sportsnet apps offer video highlights, and the associated sites only offer video highlights in Flash. When I visit NHL.com looking for highlights, I get forwarded to their GameCenter offering. In short, the NHL expects me to have to pay to watch video highlights on my iPad.
Of course, somebody has routed around the bogosity, and hosts a simple site for NHL highlights that runs very smoothly on my iPad.
We interrupt talk of the World Cup and lingerie models to discuss the Canucks recent player movement. Today is the start of the free agency period, enabling teams to sign (typically older) players who have reached the end of their contracts. It’s a frenzy of deal making and over-spending general managers.
The Canucks made two sizable deals today, signing BC-born, hard-nosed defenceman Dan Hamhuis to a six year, $4.5 million/year deal and BC-by-marriage (his wife is Steve Nash’s sister) defensive forward Manny Malhotra to three years at $2.5 million a year. They also signed spare parts Jeff Tambellini and Joel Perrault. Add the draft-day trade for Keith Ballard, and Canucks GM Mike Gillis has been a busy man.
To his credit, Gillis has recognized and addressed the team’s defensive deficiencies. The team simply couldn’t deal with the Blackhawks’ speed and size during last year’s playoffs. None of these players are going to pot a lot of goals, but goal-scoring hasn’t been a problem for the Canucks in recent years.
I like that both Ballard and Hamhuis are just 27, and coming into the prime of their careers. The team also got significantly meaner. The forwards aren’t a particularly physical bunch, but Ballard and Hamhuis can dish out punishment from the back-end (heh).
The team almost certainly bids farewell to concussed Willie Mitchell, Kyle Wellwood, Pavol Demitra (good riddance) and Andrew Raycroft (as I write this, I see he’s signed with Dallas), all free agents. With eight NHL already under contract (if they sign restricted free agent Shane O’Brien, that’s nine) they’ll almost certainly trade odd-man out Kevin Bieksa for help up-front and to clear up some salary cap space.
The other day I lent a book to a friend. Before handing it over, I paged through it, and discovered an article I’d torn out of the Vancouver Sun. It’s from April 7, 2005, and features a poem by Richard Harrison. He’s writing about the labour lockout which resulted in the cancellation of the 2004-2005 NHL season. I also thought its sad tone was applicable to any fan mourning the loss of their team’s exit from the post-season.
NH Elegy
Once, men came home from war,
or from the sides of family graves,
to lace up skates and play for it
as if everything could be remade
in a silver bowl passed hand to hand.
For years it etched the seasons
with their winning names,
and took the touch of triumph
into each triumphant house. It paused
just once – to mourn the dead, and
stayed unmarked to mark their passing.
Today, left idle in the Hall of Fame,
while rich men quarrel to no profit at its base,
untouched upon its plinth it stands.
And all who see it can tell you now
how a fallen thing is one that no one holds.
Back in 1994, Harrison wrote a lovely book of hockey poems entitled “Hero of the Play”. I highly recommend it. You can read and hear some of his poems elsewhere on the web.
Doesn’t Roberto Luongo look a bit like Count Chocula? Maybe it’s just the widow’s peak, but…
I don’t think I’ve ever eaten Count Chocula. I looked around on the web, and there’s a lot of concern that the cereal has been discontinued. That’s apparently not the case, as you can buy it on Amazon.
As I recently wrote, the web loves infographics (today’s random example is about the working world). In recent talks, I’ve been urging people to make them. They can be a low-risk, easy win in terms of driving traffic and visibility. And they’re fun.
A reader recently sent me this awesome example, which tries to resolve the nerdy problem of comparing hockey stars from different eras. It’s a creative, thoughtful approach to the issue, and a great visualization of a ton of data. Here’s a screenshot of a small section:
The graphic is actually a big PDF, but it’s worth checking out whether you’re excited about the playoffs or not.
In a clever bit of PR, the folks at Edmonton’s water utility, EPCOR, released this chart showing city water consumption during the gold medal hockey game last weekend (click for a slightly larger version):
I wonder if there will be any impact on other parts of our lives? Will there be a small blip in the number of babies born nine months from now?
Small, related marketing lesson: I originally found this graphic on a coupleof blogs. I genuinely tried to find its original source on EPCOR’s website, but couldn’t. Google was no help either. When you’ve got a clever idea that gets some legs like this, make sure that people can discover and link to its original context easily.
If you’re suffering from Olympics withdrawal (as opposed to me, who’s suffering from a bit of a Olympic hangover), this might please you. It’s a video of False Creek shot while Sidney Crosby scored the overtime winner last Sunday. It’s the audio you’re interested in–you can safely fast-forward to the one-minute mark:
As you may have noticed, I haven’t had a lot to say about the Olympics. I went to a few hockey games (including one courtesy of Tourism BC–thanks, guys) and a biathlon event (where Jamessnapped a bunch of photos). I’ve generally enjoyed the Games (though I’ve got enough friends opposed to them to understand their downside), but I’m happy to see them completed.
I’ve watched more hockey than anything else, much of it with friends and family. In doing so, I’ve discussed the same two topics a number of times:
Is it appropriate to run up the score, as the Canadian women’s hockey team did in a 18-0 thumping of the Slovakian team in their opener?
Given the constant dominance of Canada and the USA, should women’s hockey be in the Olympics?
As it happens, I’ve summarized both arguments in the comments on this post by Rebecca. I thought I’d reproduce them here, with some minor tweaks.
Running Up the Score
This is a common complaint levelled at international tournaments of all sorts–it’s not unique to hockey (I’m reminded of a certain 31-0 victory by Australia over American Samoa in World Cup qualifying). The optics aren’t good.
Here’s why teams do it: the number of goals you score (your ‘goals for’ number) is usually the tie-breaking statistics when you have the same number of points as another team. This is obviously hugely important if that tiebreaker determines, say, who advances to the next round. It may have lesser importance, too. For example, it can determine who gets home field (or ice) advantage.
Also, from a sports psychology perspective, if a team ‘goes easy’ on a lesser team, they risk carrying that behaviour into the subsequent games against tougher opponents. As coaches say, “you have to play your own game, not your opponents’”. As such, ‘taking your foot off the gas’ can be risky.
The Future of Women’s Hockey in the Olympics
Last Friday, IOC President Jack Rogge (who feels a little fascist, doesn’t he?) remarked on the lopsided results in women’s hockey:
Hours before the gold medal final between the United States and Canada, dominant powers in a tournament where they routed outmatched rivals, Rogge said the Olympics can bear the lopsidedness for only so long.
“There is a discrepancy. Everyone agrees with that,” Rogge said. “This may be the investment period for women’s ice hockey. I would personally give them more time to grow but there must be a period of improvement. “We cannot continue without improvement.”
Accusations of sexism were levelled at Rogge, more because of his comments on the Canadian women’s celebration (which almost certainly were sexist) than the sports future in the Olympics. Shelley Fralic’s poorly-argued–she ignores the question of parity altogether–piece is a good example of the response Rogge’s remarks received.
To separate gender politics from sport, imagine the following scenario. Let’s pretend that snowball fights are an Olympic event:
For four Olympic Games in a row, you know with near certainty that the US and Canada Snowball Fighting teams will meet in the final. They’ve met in three of four gold-medal games. They have almost never lost to any other team in the tournament (Canada has once and the USA twice, I think), and they’ve outplayed all other opponents by a considerable margin. The final is exciting, but every snowball fight up to that point is pretty much a foregone conclusion. It’s a sure bet that at the Snowball Fighting finals in 2014, it’ll be USA and Canada again.
The mistake the IOC made was permitting women’s hockey to join when they did. I assume that they expected other nations to catch up to the USA and Canadian women, but that simply hasn’t happened over the last 14 years. It’s not all that surprising, considering that the much more popular men’s game only has, at best, eight or ten competitive teams.
If they decided to remove women’s hockey, the decision wouldn’t be without precedent. Softball was recently removed from the Summer Olympics because of America’s dominance of the sport through four consecutive Games.
The common counter-argument I’ve heard is “what better way to motivate other countries than with the promise of an Olympic medal?” This seems pretty specious, as it could be applied to any sport–no matter how niche or regionally lopsided–as a reason for inclusion in the Olympics.
I’ve always enjoyed watching Canada/USA games. And the increase in talent among those two teams in the past 14 years has been remarkable.
I don’t know what the right decision is for the future of the sport, but if you’re a fan of parity and unpredictability, you’re not a fan of having women’s hockey in the Olympics.
