The Fix Is In, page 29
With Malkin spared from a one-game suspension and Game Three in their back pocket, the Penguins skated to another 4-2 victory in Game Four. It was after this game with the series tied 2-2 that the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reported that the NHL and NBC had agreed to a two-year extension on their TV deal. Odd timing to be sure, but the deal at this juncture made sense. The Crosby-Ovechkin duel proved hockey could still make headlines, and with the way the current Stanley Cup Finals’ ratings were tracking, everything was up from the year before. In fact, Game Three was the most watched telecast in Versus’ history, and that was immediately eclipsed by Game Four. These ratings were a 42 percent increase the 2007-2008 Finals which featured the same two teams. Without a doubt, the Stanley Cup Finals ratings had been improving with each season since the lockout cancelled it. The numbers weren’t what NBC got in partnership with the NBA, but they were promising. The NHL and NBC had great success with the Winter Classic outdoor game played for two seasons on New Year’s Day, and will team up for the 2010 Winter Olympics, which will feature ice hockey stocked with NHL All-Stars as a prime attraction. Even though the NHL didn’t profit greatly by keeping its unusual revenue-sharing deal with NBC, it was keeping the league in the limelight. What more could the NHL want at that point? Officially, this deal was not announced until mid-July, some six weeks later, but everything The Globe and Mail reported in its piece on the agreement was accurate.
If one assumes The Globe and Mail was correct in its piece and the NHL and NBC struck their renewal deal at that juncture, then what happened next continued the string of oddities surrounding the 2008-2009 Stanley Cup Finals. Back in Detroit, the Red Wings pounded the Penguins in Game Five, winning 5-0. Nonetheless, it was the highest-rated program on television that night, giving the NHL and NBC a clear victory as well. Game Six was back in Pittsburgh. Just the year before, it was on the Penguins’ home ice in Game Six when the Red Wings beat the Penguins to hoist the Cup as champions. Despite being on the verge of winning a championship yet again in Pittsburgh, the Red Wings came out in Game Six and took just three shots in the first period. They followed that up with only nine more in the second. While the Red Wings fired 14 shots on goal in the final period, they couldn’t overcome a two-goal deficit and lost 2-1. The stage was set for a Game Seven.
Could the NHL have manufactured that result? Considering everything that preceded Game Seven, it might not be as farfetched as it appeared. With NBC and the NHL splitting the television profits, a Game Seven was in everyone’s best interest. Ratings were rising with each game played, and profits were increasing. The Red Wings franchise, if convinced to drop Game Six, stood to gain as well. Game Seven would be played in Detroit, and promised more ticket, T-shirt, hot dog and beer sales across the board. Whether the Red Wings actually won on their home ice would matter little to ownership; fans weren’t going to walk away from their beloved team at that point. The team was a dynasty, having won four championships in 12 years. Season ticket sales and interest in the Red Wings wouldn’t drop in 2009-2010 if they failed to win the Stanley Cup. Game Seven would be profitable—very profitable—to those running the organization regardless of the ultimate outcome.
The hype for a Game Seven was enormous, the largest marketing push the NHL had attempted in some time. The Finals schedule aided in attracting viewers as Game Seven occurred on a Friday night and was not competing with NBA playoff games. Once the puck dropped, the NHL’s and NBC’s job was complete. They just needed to sit back and see what amount of success they would reap.
Meanwhile, one would think the Red Wings, having ripped the Penguins 5-0 the last time they faced off in Detroit and coming off a lackluster performance in Game Six, would once again come out firing considering hockey’s grandest prize was on the line. They did outshoot Pittsburgh 25-18 and held the Penguins to just one shot on goal in the third period, yet the Red Wings fell 2-1. Perhaps the Penguins just played a perfect game that night. Even if that was the case, it is interesting to note that throughout the entire 2008-2009 season including the playoffs prior to that Game Seven, the Red Wings were held to less than two goals at home just twice, in a 3-1 loss to Montreal and a 2-0 shutout versus the Islanders (both games were regular season contests). The Red Wings normally scored goals in bunches in Detroit, like they had in Game Five, yet here with the Cup awaiting the victor they could only tally a single point.
While the Penguins won the Stanley Cup in a game for the ages, what happened off the ice was more impressive to the NHL and its broadcast partner NBC. Game Seven of the 2008-2009 Stanley Cup Finals was the most-watched NHL game in 36 years (since Game Six of the 1973 Stanley Cup Finals between the Montreal Canadiens and Chicago Blackhawks). It averaged over eight million viewers and held a 4.3 ratings share, the highest since the pre-lockout Game Seven of the Finals between New Jersey and Anaheim in 2003.
With the renewal of the TV deal with NBC, officially announced in July 2009, the NHL is seeing the beginning perhaps of its own resurgence. The 2009 Winter Classic, played between the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks in Wrigley Field, was the most-watched regular-season game in the NHL in 34 years. NBC Sports won an Emmy award for the Winter Classic, not for its coverage of the game, but for its promotion of it. At that point the NHL and NBC appeared more than happy with the results of their partnership. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman stated, “We’re delighted with the coverage NBC has given us, and we know that NBC is happy to have us in their stable of sports properties.” NBC Sports president Ken Schanzer seconded the motion, adding “We’re thrilled to be able to continue our relationship with the NHL and build on the positive momentum on and off the ice. Together, we have attained viewership milestones not seen in more than three decades.”
Have the happy partners achieved these heights just through hard work, strong marketing, and a renewed focus on young talent? Or, coupled with an eager broadcast partner, has the league willingly emboldened itself to manipulating games in order to garner higher ratings, more attention, and ultimately more profit? How cutthroat might a struggling league be to ensure its own success?
THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
According to a 2008 Harris poll, today 30 percent of sports fans call the NFL their favorite sports league. Second closest was MLB at 15 percent. Amazingly in 1985, this same poll found the NFL’s and MLB’s popularity to be virtually equal with percentages of 24 percent and 23 percent respectively. In 2006, some 222 million people tuned in to an NFL game. That’s nearly three out of every four people living in the U.S. Also in 2006, the NFL playoffs (not the Super Bowl, mind you) doubled the ratings of the World Series and tripled that of the NBA Finals. More women tuned in to the Super Bowl than to watch the Academy Awards. Simply put, in terms of popularity, ratings, and money, the NFL currently stands as the undisputed king of professional sports.
Perhaps what made the game such a fan favorite was the uniqueness of its schedule. Only the NFL plays one game a week, which more often than not can always be found on the same day of the week. This allows even the most casual of fan the ability to watch every game his favorite team plays without much effort or time spent away from other endeavors. The quirk of the NFL schedule that led to the league’s dominance over its rivals was a double-edged sword. With each team only playing eight home games a season (or 10 if you want to include preseason games), there is no chance for any NFL team to recoup its operating costs through ticket sales alone. While even the worst of MLB teams can draw over a million fans over the course of a 162-game season, selling out all eight home games can only do so much for a NFL team’s bottom line. This is why the NFL is so dependent on the revenue from its television contracts. That money literally keeps the NFL operational.
Even by the 1970s, the NFL required the money from the TV networks to pay its players competitive salaries. Without the millions and now billions of dollars the networks pay to the NFL, the league wouldn’t have the caliber of athletes it possesses. It is very likely the NFL would have remained a much smaller league with a few strong teams, or at the very least, ranked behind both baseball and basketball in fan popularity because the level of competition would have suffered greatly. Athletes go where the money is. Few would be willing to put their physical well-being on the line in a violent game like football if there were no rewards. Yet, thanks to TV’s participation, the NFL currently thrives unlike any other sport.
In a sense, the NFL made a deal with the devil to secure such great success. The league is now completely committed to its television partners. Its need for the networks’ money forced the NFL to cater to its television audience and not the fans in the stadium seats. Ratings mean more to the league than ticket sales. Thus luring fans to their TV sets became the NFL’s number one priority, and it remains so today. This shift in focus completely changed the game of football and the way the NFL operated and marketed itself.
One of the first and longest-lasting ideas the NFL implemented was parity. Originally dubbed “Pete’s parity” after former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle who christened the plan, parity is the attempt to balance every team in the league by giving struggling teams a better opportunity to improve from year to year while at the same time making it more difficult for the best teams to repeat their past success. With the creation of rules like allowing the worst teams to have the following year’s top draft choices as well as the first crack at any players available on the waiver wire, tweaking the schedule based on each team’s record the season before, and the addition of the salary cap, the league believed it could ensure that no team dominated its rivals for too long. The owners accepted those alterations for one specific and important reason: television.
Parity was a concerted attempt to equal every franchise only because such actions would keep more teams in the playoff hunt deeper into the season. Those changes were instituted to maximize viewer interest throughout the course of the entire 16-game season much to the joy of the networks that paid the NFL those billions of dollars. Parity gave fans hope that their team would have a shot of making the playoffs and perhaps enjoying a Super Bowl run even if that team was hovering around the .500 mark late into the season. Dennis Lewin, the NFL’s senior vice president for broadcasting, said in 2002, “Clearly, parity is good. More teams, more cities, more interest later in the season. People care about the division races, and with more teams with a shot to get into playoffs, it speaks well for parity.”48
Though on the surface the idea behind parity seems rather sound and keeps the league fair for every owner, it actually reeks of collusion. Somehow the 32 different NFL owners agreed that making everyone equally balanced was more beneficial to each individual owner than was having an open, free-market-league. In fact, the owners all voted upon the rules that now force their own hands and make parity a reality. The NFL has always engaged in revenue sharing from the highly valued TV contracts down to sharing the money earned from souvenir sales. But parity would have us believe that the NFL is some form of utopian collective where all 32 owners are working more for the collective good than they are for self-prosperity. Maybe they are, which, if true, actually makes the league more open for the sort of tampering many believe to be occurring behind closed doors.
What the fan has to look at is does parity actually work as the league intended? On the surface, it appears as though it does. Teams often bounce from worst to first in a single season. Each division seems to undergo radical changes from year to year, but part of that has to do with the current alignment of teams. With only four teams in each division within the league, dramatic turnarounds really aren’t that impressive. A difference of two wins in a season can turn a last place 7-9 team into a 9-7 divisional champion. Considering that in 2006, one in every four NFL games ended with a margin of victory that was three points or less, winning two more games could mean just scoring six more points in the course of a season. Potentially, a few extra field goals could turn a bunch of also-rans into playoff contenders, which shows how delicate it is for a team to make the playoffs in the NFL. In fact, from 2003 through 2008, 27 of the NFL’s 32 teams have reached the playoffs.
Parity is supposed to mean more than just giving any team a shot at a playoff birth. Parity is meant to propel unlikely teams to championships. Again, the NFL appears to do just that. Out of the 43 Super Bowls played, 17 different franchises (out of a current total of 32 teams—that’s 53 percent) have been crowned champions. Another 10 teams have played in the Super Bowl but failed to win. Only five of the NFL’s 2009 teams—the Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars, Houston Texans, Detroit Lions and New Orleans Saints—have yet to make a Super Bowl appearance (however, both Cleveland’s and Houston’s current franchises are less than 10 years old). When compared to Major League Baseball, a league that has nearly ripped itself apart in a prolonged fight to keep such league-sanctioned parity from being born, the NFL’s record isn’t all that impressive. During this same Super Bowl era, MLB has seen 19 different franchises (out of 30 teams—that’s 63 percent) win the World Series while seven other teams reached that peak but failed to capture the title in the past 43 years. Only four MLB teams—the Chicago Cubs, Washington Senators, Seattle Mariners, and Texas Rangers—have yet to take the field in a World Series in that same time span.
Parity was also supposed to crush any sort of dynasty before it got a foothold within the league. Yet in this mandate, parity has completely failed. The Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s, the San Francisco 49ers of the 1980s, the Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s, and the New England Patriots of the 2000s have all been labeled as dynasty teams by league pundits. Other teams, such as the 1980s Oakland Raiders, the 1990s Buffalo Bills, and the 2000s Philadelphia Eagles could also be labeled as dynasty teams. Though these teams failed to win Super Bowl after Super Bowl, each had great success over a four- to six-year period of time, much like their dynasty counterparts. Parity was supposed to combat this by bolstering the cellar-dwellers into legitimate rivals. Yet during these dynasty years, teams such as the Cincinnati Bengals, New Orleans Saints, and Phoenix Cardinals consistently remained laughable as league doormats. Just as the system didn’t work to suppress the dynasty teams, it failed to assist the perennial losers.
So, maybe the NFL’s version of parity works, and then again, maybe it doesn’t. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter. In 2002, Sean McManus, the president of CBS Sports, said, “Parity is great, but close games are as important.”49Adding to that sentiment was Ed Goren, the president of Fox Sports, who also in 2002 stated, “I appreciate parity, yet for everyone who’s a fan of parity, I’m a fan of having super matchups.”50Apparently two of the NFL’s biggest partners don’t care one way or the other if parity is actually successful in its goals; they simply care about the ultimate results, keeping fans interested, because that’s what most affects the bottom line.
In looking at it, the NFL may share a very similar sentiment. Maybe the league doesn’t care if the rules meant to create parity actually do the job. What the league may prefer is the illusion of parity. If you claim to have a system in place that can take a pathetic team and turn it Cinderella-like into a champion in a year’s time, it gives the league the ability to do whatever it pleases at any given opportunity and simply chalk up unbelievable outcome to parity. It is a perfect cloak, allowing the NFL to wash its hands of any notion that outcomes might be predetermined. That, perhaps, is the greatest genius behind parity.
To witness parity in action, one needs look no further than the amazing success of the NFL’s two expansion teams that joined the league in 1995. When the NFL decided the time was right to expand its size, there were five cities considered to be the best candidates for expansion: Charlotte, St. Louis, Baltimore, Memphis, and Jacksonville. Of course, no one seemed to remember that both St. Louis and Baltimore previously had teams that ditched those cities for greener pastures elsewhere. Apparently, with that forgotten, those two cities had what it took to host NFL franchises—an ownership group with lots of cash to spend. Although it only took a $16 million “expansion fee” for Seattle and Tampa Bay to join the league in 1976, in 1995 that fee shot up to a whopping $140 million. Why so much? According to NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, “The $140 million was a result of a very thorough and exhaustive analysis that looked at communities, other sports fees, and the value of NFL teams in recent years. We’ve worked very hard to come up with a fair price and fair terms. We think this is.”51 What Tagliabue failed to mention was that if a team tacked on to that initial $140 million the interest charged for spreading that payment over a three-year time frame (only 50 percent of the money was required up front), and added on the fact that no new team would receive a full share of the NFL’s coveted TV revenues for its first three years in the league, that expansion fee climbed to $190-$200 million.
The two cities that were awarded the new franchises were Charlotte and Jacksonville (despite losing at the time, the other three cities being considered, St. Louis, Baltimore, and Memphis, all had NFL teams by 1997, because other franchises relocated). One would think that both the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars would face some tough times right out of the gate as new NFL teams, parity or not. Though given an initial high draft pick, the majority of both teams were really comprised of the dreck the other teams had cast off and left available in the expansion draft. Stocked with coaching staffs unfamiliar with their personnel and players not used to playing together, each team looked weak. In that initial season they were, as the Panthers posted a 7-9 record while the Jaguars went 4-12. On the other hand, both franchises did manage to break the record for most games won by an expansion team set by the Cincinnati Bengals in 1968 with three.
