NHL Marketing Looks More Brilliant Today

It appears that the National Hockey League has succeeded in doing something better than the other major sports.

What…are you serious?

Yes, I am serious. In fact, the National Hockey League has made marketing and business decisions better than the other major sports!

As I wait for you to get up off of the floor, compose yourself and stop laughing, I will explain myself.

Earlier this year the National Hockey League entered into an agreement to allow published game footage to appear on Google’s, recently acquired and extremely popular, video sharing site youtube.com.

At first many business people and fans alike wondered how this free sharing of video game footage would help the league. The revenue wasn’t being generated by contracts with the major networks and there really didn’t seem to be much in it for the NHL except to maybe expose a few savvy young internet users to the game.

Enter Google.

Google has now introduced a more comprehensive search function to their system that will now include video in the search results.

This means that all of those videos the league has published and allowed to remain on youtube.com will be indexed in Google’s search engine and will be displayed for people looking for anything related to the NHL.

Why is video so important?

For the same reason that television highlight reels and Don Cherry’s Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em videos are so popular. People are lazy and they like to be entertained by audio and visual stimulation rather than reading. I am just as guilty as the next person; just look at all the videos posted on nhldigest.com!

All in all, more people will now have access to the athletic greatness that hockey has to offer. More people will now see the Ultimate Sidney Crosby Highlight Reel and Alexander Ovechkin’s Hole in One from the Capital’s golf tournament last fall. For the popularity of the sport, this is a great thing!

Let me be the first to say kudos to the National Hockey League’s marketing team!