NHL Network Gets a Foothold in USA ...

There's been a ton of sports talk on the NFL Network, mostly stemming from last night's GB Packers vs. Dallas Cowboys game which was played in the vast & empty forest of limited cable tv/direct tv/fios fiber optic cyber-space.

The only NFL fans who seemed to be happy with the NFL Network situation are the fellow restaurant-sports bar owner of this world. (See Johnnie's on the Side; Boston).

Well, aside from the NFL Netbroken fiasco, the folks that brought us Peter Puck are quietly launching the NHL Network. I spotted these comments, made by NHL Commish Gary Bettman, a proud Cornell guy.

We launched about a month ago and we're in somewhere around 12 million homes," Gary Bettman said at the Reuters Media Summit in New York. "I expect over the next year to see that number double, at least."

The NHL Network in the United States, launched in October, is accessible to about 80 million U.S. homes through such cable TV operators as Comcast Corp, Time Warner Cable Inc and Charter Communications and satellite operators like DirecTV Group Inc.

The network got its start in Canada in 2001 and has almost 1 million subscribers there. Bettman said some media companies he would not identify own stakes in the network.

NBA TV, CSTV, Tennnis Channel, The Golf Network, ESPN 360, Versus, Speed, NFL, NHL ... MLB Mosaic. If you are going to compete in the sports marketing world - you better be ready to compete on the network, cable, digital tv world.