CapFriendly sale may cause NHL to start hiding critical information from fans
Photo credit: USA Today
The sale of CapFriendly to the Washington Capitals is causing the NHL to bring up the debate again of making player contracts private information.
With the recent purchase of the site CapFriendly the Washington Capitals, it seems to hint at a bigger trend of the NHL pushing away the public's access to information. He NHL has always been weary of sharing this kind of information to the public, but when a third party site like CapFriendly does it all for the league then there's not much they can really do to stop it.
CapFriendly was the place that any interested fan could go to see how their team's finances were set up, the individual players' contract and how a team is compared to the NHL's hard cap. These were all extremely useful pieces of information that many fans would use often, to look at how their team was set up after moves or what moves they could make to make the team better.
Gary Bettman himself has never been a fan of having this information public, as he has spoken out against having all salary information public in the past. Gary Bettman continues to show how out of touch he is with average hockey fans, as he has a quote from 2015 about how little Bettman thinks fans care about analytics and contracts.
«I don't think it's a resource we need to provide because I'm not sure fans are as focused on what players make as they are about their performance on the ice.
It's obvious his viewpoint hasn't changed at all, despite exponentially increasing traffic on analytics sites like CapFriendly itself. You only have to take one look at the community trade generator to realize that fans are always thinking about player salaries; who's got the best or worst contract value, how close teams are to the salary cap, which players' could be a good fit for another team if affordable and so many more caveats.
But yet for some reason, the NHL insists on privatizing data like this. It makes no sense, since literally all it can do is hurt fans. GMs already have access to this kind of information, so it's not like it gives some a competitive edge over others. This is all data that should be kept publicly available due to rampant fan interest.
It's hard to imagine a day where you have to load up the most recent NHL game just to see how close your team is to the cap. It's such a nonsensical thing to be so worried about, as Bettman shows once again that he has his priorities in the wrong place. Bettman is a commissioner who will only ever care about Owners' pockets, and he forgets that you can't grow a game that the fans don't want to watch. This will be another massive mistake that only proves to show how little Bettman actually understands about the sport's viewers.
It's obvious his viewpoint hasn't changed at all, despite exponentially increasing traffic on analytics sites like CapFriendly itself. You only have to take one look at the community trade generator to realize that fans are always thinking about player salaries; who's got the best or worst contract value, how close teams are to the salary cap, which players' could be a good fit for another team if affordable and so many more caveats.
But yet for some reason, the NHL insists on privatizing data like this. It makes no sense, since literally all it can do is hurt fans. GMs already have access to this kind of information, so it's not like it gives some a competitive edge over others. This is all data that should be kept publicly available due to rampant fan interest.
It's hard to imagine a day where you have to load up the most recent NHL game just to see how close your team is to the cap. It's such a nonsensical thing to be so worried about, as Bettman shows once again that he has his priorities in the wrong place. Bettman is a commissioner who will only ever care about Owners' pockets, and he forgets that you can't grow a game that the fans don't want to watch. This will be another massive mistake that only proves to show how little Bettman actually understands about the sport's viewers.
| POLL | ||
JUIN 11 | 520 ANSWERS CapFriendly sale may cause NHL to start hiding critical information from fans Do you like Bettman as a commissioner? | ||
| Yes, he does grow the game | 43 | 8.3 % |
| No, he screws over fans too much | 477 | 91.7 % |
| List of polls | ||
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