ESPN breaks off talks with NHL

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

The NHL and NHLPA will resume talks Wednesday and Thursday in Toronto, but ESPN has pulled the plug on negotiations with the league over television rights fees.

"Right now we're done negotiating," Mark Shapiro, executive vice president of ESPN, said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. "We do not anticipate carrying the NHL next season."

ESPN declined its $60-million option to carry the NHL for the 2005-06 season. Speculation was that ESPN might want to negotiate a reduced price on rights fee, but Shapiro said Tuesday that ESPN was looking for a no-rights-fee deal at this point. 

"The only model that would work right now without a labor agreement is a no-rights-fee deal," Shapiro was quoted as saying by Bloomberg News. "It's a sad state of affairs when the ESPN and the NHL break up like this."

The ESPN executive added that even if the league and the NHLPA reach a  labor agreement soon, the NHL is still only worth "well below half of $60 million" in rights fees.

The league disagrees.

"When the $60 million option was negotiated the possibility of a lockout existed, and it was discussed," NHL spokeswoman Bernadette Mansur told Bloomberg. "We're not interested in devaluing the product any further."

Some say the loss of ESPN would be more than a just a financial loss for the NHL.

"It's more symbolic," Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon, told the Los Angeles Times. "ESPN has gotten to the point where it legitimizes a sport by putting it on its airwaves. Any sport trying to establish its credibility in North America has to be on ESPN.

"This will lead to further regionalizing of the sport, and that's where you're going to get most of your coverage, regional sports networks. That will make the job of the marketing side of the NHL that much harder."

Right now, the NHL's only national U.S. television deal is with NBC. There are no rights fees involved in that agreement. NBC will shares revenues with the league once it covers its costs of carrying the games.

Spokesmen for TNT and Spike TV, two of the networks that have been mentioned as possible partners for the NHL, declined comment about the league's situation with ESPN.