Feature: HDTV set to revolutionise Canadian ice hockey - January 2007  

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'Cycling the puck': market forces and HDTV adoption

The Canadian HDTV community continues to lag behind the US since, in the early days of HDTV, the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission decided to allow market forces to determine when broadcasters should commence delivery of HDTV signals in Canada. By contrast, the Federal Communications Commission in the US set a mandate that all US broadcasters must use digital feeds by 2006, and subsequently, all televisions on the US market must be capable of receiving these feeds by 2007. 
The impact of this decision on the HDTV landscape has been a Canadian HDTV content void. Without forced transition, Canadian content producers have been reluctant to invest in the extra equipment, talent and bandwidth required for HDTV. 
Experts however maintain that HDTV will be the most influential media technology for the ice hockey product by indicating that current markets are now shifting. In the absence of readily available data for future adoption in Canada, we can adopt comparable data and forecasts from the US market which reveal dramatic HDTV sales increases in 2004, 2005 and 2006 (Yankee Group, 2004; Consumers Electronics Association, 2004; TWICE, 1999). From this data, a Bass model forecast was carried out, which determined that the Canadian market would peak sometime in 2007 at anywhere between 3m and 5m units.  

'Power-play': production-centric and viewer-centric advantages of HDTV in ice hockey

Ice hockey coverage is distinct from other sports for a variety of reasons, including the fact that hockey is the only sport with a physical barrier between cameras and the game...NBA puts camera positions ahead of seats, NHL does not. There are two shortcomings of current NHL coverage in order of increasing deviation from the live experience: sound and speed; both were supported by other experts as areas that will benefit considerably from HDTV. Specific to the issue of sound, HDTV surround-sound is able to provide viewers with a "true auditory experience of sitting in the stands with commentary and game sounds in the fore and arena clamour in the background".
Although the issue of speed is likely to go unnoticed by avid fans and viewers, it does play an important role in attracting new viewers.
In short, experts indicate that HDTV allows for decreased camera movement and switching commonly found in current NHL coverage, enabling the viewer to follow the puck in the same field of view more than in SDTV. Additionally, it allows viewers to see up-ice and follow players without the puck as plays materialise. Collectively, these improvements will allow the novice fan to follow the game more competently and the experienced fan to enjoy it more comfortably.  

'Know your opponent': HDTV against the competition

In addressing HDTV in the context of the alternative media technologies, some experts commented on the projected behaviour of ice hockey viewers. One might classify the five media technologies under analysis into two groups - those that allow for convenience (PVRs, VOD, MMDs) and those that directly affect the core viewing experience (iTV, HDTV). Experts noted the latter were more relevant to this analysis of the televised hockey product. We agreed, as the legal aspects of PVRs, the difficulties of a pay-per-view model as implicated by VOD and the degraded viewing quality of MMDs all pose barriers to adoption in the sport industry. Of the two remaining technologies, HDTV is an improvement (i.e. sound, aspect ratio, resolution) of a previously adopted viewing technology - NTSC, whereas iTV is essentially a convergence between television and the internet, which is not currently adopted in television viewing behaviours.
One industry expert describes this divide: "Over the last several years you've heard a lot about 'interactive' - you know, it's one of those buzzwords of the 90s that you get sick of. And I'm still not entirely convinced that people want to do that - generally... because I think people who watch TV are still kind of passive consumers. I mean, do you want to sit there and [interact] while watching a game? I don't want to. If I really want the stats... I can go to leafs.com and figure out anything I want. It's all there you know so do you really need to do that as part of the broadcast?" 

Conclusion  

HDTV is identified as the most influential future media technology for the televised hockey product in Canada. This finding provides important direction to practitioners involved in ice hockey. Pertinent information for the future of ice hockey is also hypothesised for all five media technologies, with particular emphasis on HDTV. Practitioners need to understand all five technologies and support and plan for the adoption and diffusion of HDTV as a common technology in the mass market, as both the literature and the experts believe that all five are potentially impactful and that HDTV will provide greater benefit to the televised hockey product over other televised products.
This is an important contribution as it suggests HDTV as a potential source of competitive advantage. In this regard, practitioners must not overlook two other findings: the potential impact of the certain arrival of iTV and HDTV convergence and our forecast that HDTV market adoption will pass the 25% benchmark in late 2007, at which point more than a quarter of all Canadian televisions will be HDTV. The latter is especially pressing as it provides a managerial deadline for adoption after which competitive advantage through adoption might dwindle.   

The International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, published by International Marketing Reports, publishes peer reviewed research and commercial case studies in sports marketing and sponsorship. Go to www.imrpublications.com for more information including abstracts and executive summaries of all papers.
The latest edition features six globally sourced papers on the impact of technology on sports marketing. The papers are:
An analysis of the willingness to pay for soccer reports on the internet
An exploration of motives in sport video gaming
Analysing the effects of advertising type and antecedents on attitude towards advertising in sport
Media technology in ice hockey (extracted above)
Stick Cricket – A case study (extracted in Sport and Technology, December 2006)
Moneyball as a supervening necessity for the adoption of player tracking technology in professional (ice) hockey

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