Fortune: You Did Not Watch That Wings Game On NBC
Joe here. Imagine, if you will, working in the NHL Public Relations office when you get a call from Forbes magazine. They want to do an article on Gary Bettman, road warrior.
(Stop laughing.)
Thrilled with the idea, you set up the interview. They come out to take a picture of Bettman at the offices, everything sounds great.
Fast forward to the issue of Forbes hitting the newsstands, and there’s the article! Let’s see what they wrote…
Going to 60 hockey games a year might sound like fun, but for Gary Bettman it’s just another day at the office. In 15 years as NHL chief, he has more than quadrupled revenues to $2.5 billion, added four teams, and changed the rules to speed up the game. But America’s fourth major sport is still without a network TV contract after the 2004-05 lockout, and attendance is well below pre-strike days. That keeps Bettman, 55, on the road shaking hands, doing deals, and catching scores on his cellphone. Fortune caught up with him in his New York office to see how he pulls it off when not on home ice.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! No network TV contract? Attendance down? I mean, it’s one thing to say that Bettman is quite possibly one of the worst commissioners in the history of professional sports, but even my wife knows those two facts are wrong. And not just mildly wrong, but flat-out, black-is-white, sun-rises-in-west, Toronto’s-about-to-turn-it-around wrong.
But here’s where things get odd. Search for the article online and you get this: (emphasis mine)
Going to 60 hockey games a year might sound like fun, but for Gary Bettman it’s just another day at the office. In 15 years as NHL chief, he has more than quadrupled revenues to $2.6 billion, added four teams and, more recently, signed TV deals with NBC and Versus, and led the league to record attendance levels even after the 2004-05 lockout season.
But meeting with team owners, business partners and season ticket holders keeps Bettman, 55, on the road shaking hands, doing deals and catching scores on his cellphone. Fortune caught up with him in his New York office to see how he pulls it off when not on home ice.
Boy, maybe things have changed from when I went through journalism class, but I remember hearing about this thing called a “correction” that newspapers and magazines would publish when they printed an error.
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May 8th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
[…] Beyond that, the article gives a great overview in a place that you’d hardly expect it. Not a long piece, but one that has to make them happy in Toronto and New York, especially in light of the Fortune fiasco. […]