NHL Winter Classic: A Crossover Success

By Eric Goodman

While American professional sports has, for years, featured arenas being shared by teams from different leagues, the typical combination has always been NBA and NHL teams playing in the same venue or NFL and MLB clubs calling the same stadium home. It wasn’t until Jan. 1, 2008 when NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and company showed the sports world that hockey could move out from underneath the roofs of their respective indoor arenas and into the open-air stadiums used by teams from both the NFL and MLB. The result, thus far, has been a rousing crossover success.

At the 2008 NHL Winter Classic, Buffalo’s Ralph Wilson Stadium provided the blustery winter wonderland venue for the Buffalo Sabres and Pittsburgh Penguins to take part in the very first regular-season outdoor game in League history. Fans from far and wide braved the snowy western New York conditions, which led to the NHL having its highest ever crowd at 71,217.

One year later, the League moved into Chicago’s historic Wrigley Field, home of MLB’s Chicago Cubs, for the 2009 Winter Classic between the Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings, which was attended by nearly 49,000 fans. On Jan. 1, 2010, Boston’s famous Fenway Park will play host to the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers for the third consecutive NHL Winter Classic. There will no doubt be fans of both the Red Sox and Bruins at Fenway that day looking to experience the first outdoor hockey game ever held in the nearly 100-year old baseball park.

Considering that Stub Hub’s lowest price ticket as of Dec. 28 was $300 for a limited view field box seat, it’s no wonder that NHL club owners are clamoring to have future Winter Classic games in their city’s respective football or baseball stadiums. A unique event such as an outdoor hockey game offers investors a rare opportunity to cash in on the crossover marketability between the NHL and whichever respective professional sports league’s venue that they are utilizing.

“Last year a reporter from the USA Today commented that being selected for this event is like being awarded the NHL’s version of the Olympic bid,” Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs told CBC News at the 2010 Winter Classic press conference in Fenway Park on July 15, 2009. “He had it right.”