ROMFORD, UK – The recession will inevitably have an effect on British Ice Hockey, as it has with the rest of the world. Leading figures throughout the Elite and English Premier Leagues have been looking at the situation, particularly the possible effects and solutions.
Financial struggles are nothing new to our teams. There are some teams that are pretty comfortable at the top, but they’re very much in the minority. Both the Elite League and the English Premier League have their share of teams that struggle a bit under the monetary constraints of keeping a competitive team going at the best of times, so the looming economic issues are going to have a lot of owners sweating.
The strain is starting to show already. Crowd numbers have gone down as everyone feels the pinch of the credit crunch.
Gerad Adams, Coach and former player of Cardiff Devils says that British ice hockey can survive the current climate. Canadian Adams, who has played at AHL level for Portland Pirates, as well as playing for several British clubs, spoke about the situation. “I think hockey can survive, definitely, but we might have to be some changes. Some teams are struggling at the moment, so the number of imports allowed might have to come down. It’s something that we’re looking into for next season.” Adams said.
Bringing the import levels down might well help, as more rosters will be made up of cheaper, British trained players. However this might also lead to a reduction in quality that a lot of fans would not like.
David Simms, Press and Media manager for the Sheffield Steelers, agrees that UK hockey will survive. “Of course hockey will survive, it has no alternative. It’s no different from any other business, be it a butcher’s shop or Woolworths, you need to cut the fat where you can and make sure you’re only paying for what’s necessary,” Simms said. “The main thing that teams need to do in this climate is to make sure that they don’t spend outside their means, as long as teams are sensible and only spend money that they actually have on players and expenses, then there shouldn’t be too much of a problem.”
In the last few weeks, rumours have emerged that Elite League strugglers Basingstoke Bison may be dropping down to the EPL next year. This should really come as no surprise. After the ill-fated reign of the Taylors last year, Bison fans must’ve thought they had endured their share of difficulties, but this season has brought them more of the same.
At the beginning of the season, the Bison’s main sponsor, airline company Zoom collapsed, leaving the team £30,000 short of being able to compete, as well as being unable to fly in their foreign players.
This crisis was survived – just – thanks to rival Elite League team Cardiff Devils’ incredible gesture of donating a five-figure sum of money to keep the Bison in the league, as well as fan support.
However more trouble was right around the corner as, after a poor start to the season, player-coach Ryan Aldridge quit the club. Following this, amid rumours that the players were not receiving their wages due to yet more financial problems, several high profile stars left the club, including talismanic forward Brad Cruikshank.
Basingstoke have now been offered at least some security, as ice rink owners Planet Ice have stepped in to keep the team afloat, at least until the end of the season. But with the reports that the Bison have asked to step down a league it looks as though the decision has been made that lower level hockey would be more affordable and sustainable.
On the possibility of losing teams to the recession, David Simms said:
“Of course we hope that all the clubs will survive because it’s good for hockey in this country but there is the chance that some teams might not be able to cope, It’s most unfortunate if and when it happens but that’s business, and it does happen. There’s only one club in this country that actually makes money, and that’s Nottingham,” Simms said.
“But the bigger, more stable clubs do try to help out the smaller clubs. For instance the bigger teams pay a luxury tax that can be used to help out the smaller teams. This is an example of interleague co-operation to try and reduce costs.”
Basingstoke Bison are by no means the only team to be suffering. Word is that Edinburgh Capitals have also informed the Elite League that they will not be competing in it next year, while financial issues forced Chelmsford Chieftains to drop from the EPL to the ENL at the beginning of the season.
Unfortunately there’s a general indifference in Britain when it comes to hockey, and this means that teams will always struggle. At the moment clubs rely on backers or large sponsors to finance their team, but as most teams operate at a loss over the season, the owner is usually someone who loves the sport, and sadly there just aren’t enough extremely wealthy lovers of British Ice Hockey to go around.
Steps do need to be taken to make hockey stronger in the UK. Gerad Adams said, “The main step is getting better sponsorship. We also need another airline sponsor now that Zoom has gone under. It’s incredibly useful with the amount of imports we need to get over to this country to have help from an airline. We just need to start banging on more doors and hope that we get that big yes.”
As well as this a huge amount of effort is going into bringing fans and publicity to the sport. “The Elite League spent a lot of money in the summer on ticket selling specialists from America, who brought a lot of new ideas, like purchasing discounted tickets in advance.” Simms said.
“I can’t speak for the rest of the league, but we (Sheffield Steelers) do a huge amount to publicise our product. We make use of e-marketing, sending out bulletins to 15,000 people at a time, we have a great website with a TV channel and have distributed over a million flyers in various places.” “We generate interest through the media, like Radio Sheffield, and we’re in the Sheffield Star every day, be it summer or winter. The information has to be spoon fed to the paper but if the effort is made to get the story to them then they will want to run it. A lot of effort is put in and it’s working,” Simms continued.
So hockey can and will survive. It might be hard at times. There will always be rough patches, but hockey in the UK is going nowhere.
Contact the author at dave.lambert@prohockeynews.com .
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