Auditing the NHL
By Spencer Thomas
The NHL’s social media is very standard for a professional sports league. It mostly focuses on highlights, but also includes statistics, news and content meant to be entertaining. It doesn’t jump outside the box very often, and that is for several reasons. The strategy is clearly influenced by the niche audience we understand hockey to have. They don’t do a ton of collaborations or cultural references because their viewership is generally uninterested in stuff like that. The NHL’s social media accounts focus exclusively on hockey. Compare that to the NFL, which can capitalize on Taylor Swift’s involvement with the league by promoting toward a completely new audience.
An external factor that troubles the NHL is the fact that their players are generally less marketable than other sports like football and basketball. Hockey culture discourages players from showing personality, which leads them to be more reserved other players. Sidney Crosby, the league’s most well-known player, is totally inactive on social media, chooses not to grace the cover of video games and is very placid off the ice. Lebron James, the Sidney Crosby of basketball, is extremely active on social media, with opinions and self-promotion on and off the court.
In the NBA, players like Dennis Rodman make extreme and entertaining body modifications that market themselves. Every year for the playoffs, Boston’s Marcus Smart dyes his hair in the team’s color, which makes for engaging social media content that is interesting to the NBA’s social media following. However, the NHL does not have walking, talking content farms playing in their league. Instead, it has to stretch its creativity muscle to engage fans. In a recent post, the league features player’s hairstyles, generally long, flowing and full, but not actually that interesting.
The bulk of the league’s entertainment-based content like this can be found on their TikTok page. That’s what all of their pinned posts are, and the rest is mostly content that isn’t supposed to inform but to amuse. However, because of how quiet hockey players are, extracting viral content from them is like yanking teeth from a dog. Their most recent post sees Ottawa Senators star Brady Tkachuk hooked to a lie detector test. This is a popular idea for short-form content, made popular in digital media by Vanity Fair. However, Tkachuk is talking about asparagus for the duration of the clip. This isn’t entertaining, nor is it endearing when somebody doesn’t have a more flamboyant trait. Now he’s just the vegetable guy.
Other social channels are less daring. They focus primarily on updates and highlights that are only interesting to those who actually follow the sport. For example, the layman doesn’t know who Tristan Jarry is, and thus won’t care about his save percentage that the NHL has posted in a graphic. With content like this, the NHL isn’t going to create new fans. This is tailored toward keeping people who are already invested in the sport.
The NHL may be trying on social media, but the culture of the sport coupled with its niche audience means that social media is not a place for balooning its engagement.
