How The NHL's John Collins Is Creating A Nation Of Passionate Puckheads

As former president and CEO of the Cleveland Browns--a hapless football team in one of America’s unluckiest sports cities--John Collins knows that fans are a fickle bunch. But to the National Football League, the Browns' annual disappointments never matter all that much, at least in this sense: If (and when) the Browns miss the playoffs, locals still watch football games, and still plan a Super Bowl party. That’s just how NFL fans are.

In 2006, following 15 years in NFL management, Collins was hired away from Cleveland to become COO of the National Hockey League, where he found a very different kind of fan. “Their behavior was much more tied to the favorite team,” he says. “And in the moments when you felt like they should be a hockey fan, you know, that’s during the Stanley cup playoffs. But that wasn’t really the kind of behavior we were seeing. It was more like, if you’re a Rangers fan and the Rangers aren’t in the playoffs, lights were off and you’re a Yankees fan.”

Collins was hired at a time of deep trouble for the NHL. It had recently emerged from a lockout that cancelled the 2004-2005 season, national interest had waned, and advertisers were lukewarm. The entire NHL playoffs weren’t even on national television.

So Collins began by reflecting on the lessons he’d taken from the NFL, arguably the nation’s most media-savvy league.

Five years later, on the eve of this season’s Winter Classic, the NHL revenues have grown from $2 billion to $3 billion. (Though, that also includes individual team revenue. The NHL says league-centric revenue-sponsorships, products, and so on--has grown 147%, though it won’t release an actual revenue figure.) And the big game on January 2--Flyers vs. Rangers, outdoors in the Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park--is a potent symbol of just how much the NHL has changed its strategy. Collins, often credited as the architect of the new NHL, tells Fast Company how it came together.

1. Create big events that reach beyond local coverage.&...

[Source: Fast Company]