Felt like watching their vacation video, don’t think that’s what ESPN were interested in… Buy what do you expect.

From dealing with different sports of different sizes from a media perspective, I think ice hockey could use baseball as a good example of how to grow.  Baseball is the fastest growing sport in NZ at the moment, and is getting plenty of exposure as a result.  I realis that infrastructure-wise there’s some huge differences between the 2 sports, but baseball still has their own problems. I dont know how well ice hockey plays with the likes of inline hockey, but baseball realised they had to work with softball rather than against it, and it’s worked for them. And then they’ve been able to sell the players on the idea that there’s more opportunities playing baseball over softball.
A lot of the growth has also been focused on increasing the game at youth level. Again, infrastructure is a huge hurdle for ice hockey but I think it’s been done pretty well with the age group competitions and the like.
For the first time, Baseball NZ got itself a dedicated Executive to work on developig the game here. That’s meant one person can help coordinate all the different aspects of the game separate from the likes of the president and other administrators. The executive is the type of person who can also deal with media and do a lot of the PR for them.
There’s been a couple if huge things happen with baseball here lately and they’ve really capitalize on it, like NY Yankee Curtis Granderson visiting and running clinics, NZ getting into the World Baseball Classic, and players signing to play in the US. There’s no reason NZ playing in the World Champs getting more coverage or any players playing overseas.
Either way, just a suggestion…
Also interesting to hear someone involved with the “international” series saying the promoter made lots of money, after the US captain said all the money was going to charity to help Christchurch. It fair to say we e come to expect bs from the promoter but saying that is way crossing the line. Maybe it’s somethin the players were sold on to come and play. Craig, you’ve got my number, I’d love to hear from you to clarify ” title=”Wink” />

According to one of the captains talking on Close Up last night, all the profits are going to charity. I look forward to following that one up!

cheers

of those who haven’t bought tickets, what’s the main reason why not?

Thanks!

I spoke to the promoter about 2 months ago and managed to get a player list out of him.  Back then there were 16 players, 9 of them were active in the NHL plus 2 retired ex-NHLers and 2 playing in minors with NHL experience.

His own words were “it’s not about the players involved, it’s about the spectacle” and that’s clearly the case judging by the drop from who they supposedly had signed up 2 months ago to who they have actually coming.  They sold the event on “NHL megastars” and clearly there are none.  The Stanely Cup winner and Olympic medalist is the same person – John Grahame – and he was essentially the back up goalie in both circumstances.