HOCKEY PROMPT

I grew up loving hockey, especially the goalies. Hockey has been a sport my dad and grandpa and great grandpa (and probably great-great-grandfather) have all loved with passion (all being Leaf's fans). Hockey was my first love, but I eventually came to love football (soccer) more. I do think social media has a bit to do with it, but honestly the sport just isn't accessible. Firstly, it's expensive to play and usually requires a lot of travel. I wanted to be a goalie too, so that's even more expensive. I had one set of road hockey goalie gear and I wore the shit out of them, but once I outgrew them I slowly outgrew the sport. Football, all you need is a ball. I even did football freestyle, so I didn't even need to join a team to play. It was a ton of fun and it makes sense why it's the most popular sport in the world.

This leads to what I assume to be the first issue. You can play basketball/football in far more areas of the world than ice hockey. I do think though that field hockey and road hockey can still be played in these locations but idk if it'll ever really be as popular as summer sports. I just don't see hockey ever having the worldwide appeal of say a sport like basketball or football. It would be cool to see it grow more though in certain areas where maybe they do have winters but maybe lack the infrastructure like Canada in terms of indoor & outdoor rink accessibility.

In terms of social media, this may be a bit of a more controversial point but hockey is pretty White. I'm White and I'm not saying White folks are boring, but football and basketball, imo, has a lot more diversity. I think this has gotten better since I was a kid but I've still seen stories throughout the years that makes me wonder how much we still have to go. Blackouts are just fucking annoy the shit out of me and I can absolutely see this contributing to people illegally streaming literally just out of convenience. Finally, I find a lack of analysis online compared to say football or basketball. I feel like despite playing and watching hockey more than basketball it was just so much easier understanding basketball. I know the rules really well except maybe some of the newer ones or like the way they call things now but overall idk tactics like football.

I think I read someone talking about shoes and comparing them to skates, but honestly I feel like hockey sticks should be what you're trying to market better and honestly I remember buying CCM because of Ovi as a kid and I was in love with my dad's Titan stick because I knew a lot of the greats used Titan before they went defunct. I also really loved the goalie equipment but it's usually all customized, so it's not like it's able for retail.

The star power of the NBA has made it entertaining but tbh they have favoured offence heavily. I prefer hockey's reliance on teamwork and its imo better balance between offence and defence (although I know hockey's only starting to get higher scoring which I also like). Hockey is a much different sport, you're playing on ice and it's good to see that hockey has taken concussions more seriously.

I grew up a hardcore fan as a kid but I'm mostly a casual fan who is only starting to follow the sport again after years of barely following it. Take this with a grain of salt since idk what I'm actually talking about.