Today, NHL.com announced the release of a "Day Pass" (that costs an absurd $19.95) for its wildly-unpopular-but-relatively-good-quality streaming service, Gamecenter.  This comes a few days after the uninspiring headline that declared "Gamecenter at its lowest price of the season!"  The $80 subscription may have been considered a relatively good deal back in October, at the beginning of the season, but with only ten games remaining before the playoffs, one would think that there should be a greater discount than 50% (from the $160 that the service costs for the whole year).  The service's usefulness, after all, decreases when the playoffs begin, as more games begin to be broadcast on major networks.

But the strangest thing about the service is that Gamecenter costs an additional twenty cents if you purchase it for one day as opposed to one month, which begs the question: Why did the NHL release a Day Pass at all?  The layout that the Gamecenter website uses looks like the scam, and the price that it has adopted is a scam.  Not that twenty dollars a month is much more reasonable, when compared to other entertainment options, but twenty dollars a day is unforgiveable.  After all, most of the games that happen in a single day start within a few hours of each other, and so at most you're paying for five or six hours of hockey.

Gamecenter allows you to watch four games at once, but I cannot really imagine paying attention to more than one hockey game at the same time.  So, at around four dollars an hour, it seems like the only way you could be more frivolous with your money is to go see The Haunting in Connecticut, a movie whose trailer asks, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" and whose audience leaves asking, "Yeah, why, for instance, was I made to watch this crap?"

All of this focus on the NHL and streaming video comes after a slew of cease-and-desist letters were sent to a number of websites that had been hosting or linking to illegal streams, which resulted in the of the most prominent (and profitable) streaming site, atdhe.net, taking down its hockey streams.

In my opinion, the NHL is making the same mistake as the RIAA: they are both using legal action to prolong the use of outdated technology, rather than embracing the technology and innovating their businesses to make money in new ways.  The  recording industry wrongly equates illegal downloads with lost sales.  It simply isn't the case that everyone who illegally downloads an album would've purchased it if they weren't able to steal it.  And the same is the case for the NHL -- many people, like myself, are unable to watch hockey games on Cable television because we live in a different area than our favorite team.

This problem stems, in part, from the fact that hockey is one of the least popular (of the popular) sports in America.  Hockey games are not available on National networks, except for several games a month (and in most cases, NBC's announcers spend more time discussing upcoming dramas than watching the hockey game).  With this being the case, I think that the NHL would be wise to set a precedent for other professioanl sports leagues by streaming all of their games online for free.  Most major television networks have all of their shows online, because they can still advertise online just as they do during live TV.

This move could potentially increase NHL viewership, and would certainly help out-of-town fans to see their favorite team's games, and most importantly, it would generate revenue from an audience that will watch streaming hockey wherever it is free.  The NHL would be wise to profit from their own free streaming service, which they could easily make the best quality, rather than spending millions of dollars in lawsuits against lesser-quality streams which would be eliminated when people stopped visiting them.