Commercialization In Hockey

Most aspects of life today in North America are influenced by commercialization. In hockey, this is apparent when watching any NHL game. From the advertisements on the boards and all around arenas, to the commercials between plays and the never ending team specific merchandise that is sold, it is quite obvious that hockey is a business. If that was not already clear, the hefty salaries that high calibre players receive should solidify it. Today hockey teams are structured strikingly similar to corporations, with different people in charge of different aspects of a team. Hockey was of course not always this way. As previously mentioned, it started out as being played for the sake of the game. It grew into a business as markets grew around it;

This started with the introduction of gate fees. As more and more players and spectators took an interest in hockey, the cost of keeping arenas and ice surfaces in shape was also increasing. While Canadian leagues were still considered amateur, “they were becoming much more commodified, as growing numbers of spectators were charged admission fees to games and teams were becoming more sophisticated in their acquisition of players.” If arena and league owners were profiting from the game why were the players not? As hockey was becoming more and more like a business, it would seem that the transition to professional players was

The league was financed by their father Joe Patrick; “Professional hockey’s potential was huge, and while Lester Patrick felt cautious about throwing the family fortune at the game, Frank Patrick convinced his father to make a huge bet on the sport.” Their first contribution to the sport was the construction of the Denman Arena in Vancouver B.C. The arena opened on December 11th, 1911 and housed North America’s first artificial ice surface, as well as 11,500 spectators. The spectators that were present on the first day of the rinks operations “found the ice to be far better than even the ordinary ice under similar conditions.” The arena was created to be the main venue for the PCHL since the arena it replaced was not large enough to fit the growing interest in hockey. Or at least it was not large enough to fit the Patrick’s expectations for the games future. The Denman Arena was not the only infrastructure that was built in the early 20th century; many others were constructed in order to keep up with the growing interest in hockey. The increased infrastructure also shows that people were started to invest in the game, whether this was in the form of building an arena or a team or spending their money and time on attending a game. Specifically for the PCHL, the Patrick’s spent $350,000 to build the Denman Arena. Money was now