Hockey Gambling at LinesMaker

Hockey Gambling

Hockey Gam­bling World­wide View­ing Access
Find­ing your favorite hockey game on TV or on the radio can be a prob­lem if you don’t live in the right cor­ner of the coun­try. The mar­ket decides what gets played and as the mar­ket has shifted around along with the net­works that air the sport through­out the coun­try, there have been sub­stan­tial dives in rat­ings in the US.

For those that have a habit of hockey gam­bling and can­not sim­ply check the box score when the game’s over online, it’s impor­tant to know not only where to see or hear the game but how best to do so.

And those hockey gam­bling masses will find that with the growth of tech­nol­ogy and world­wide access, it’s not nec­es­sar­ily as hard as one would think. First off, the net­work rights were pur­chased by NBC after a long time deal with ABC. NBC’s rev­enue shar­ing pro­gram was more to the NHL’s lik­ing though and took over. On cable, the newly renamed Out­door Life Net­work (now known as Ver­sus) took over air­ing of NHL games from ESPN with a sub­stan­tial cash bid.

The deals have both led to smaller rat­ings through­out the US. While rat­ings have always been high in Cana­dian mar­kets (CBC airs at least one game a week, plus all play­off games involv­ing Cana­dian teams), the US mar­ket strug­gles, espe­cially when teams with lim­ited mar­kets are in the play­offs. The 2006 play­offs for exam­ple, hockey gambling’s worst night­mare, were won by Car­olina, after defeat­ing Edmon­ton in the Stan­ley Cup Finals. The two teams have very lit­tle mar­ket in the US and gained very lim­ited view­er­ship. In con­trast, teams like the New York Rangers gar­ner expo­nen­tially larger viewership.

It’s not only TV though the hockey gam­bling pop­u­la­tion can catch their NHL games. XM Satel­lite Radio is a great option now, broad­cast­ing over 1000 games through­out the year. Like­wise, dig­i­tal cable has made it pos­si­ble for many peo­ple to get imme­di­ate access to more than a dozen dif­fer­ent games from through­out the nation via Pay-Per-View and NHL view­ing pack­ages. The dig­i­tal age has made the inter­net a great place to catch games as well, with online ser­vices offer­ing video scor­ing high­lights through­out a game.

For those attached to hockey gam­bling, or merely the die hard hockey gam­bling faith­ful out there, it might be a pain to find your games, but as the tech­nol­ogy grows, so too do your options for watch­ing nearly every game your favorite team plays.

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