The power of hockey

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Think hockey. Oversize Russians with mullets and supermodel girlfriends smashing into oversize Quebecois with missing front teeth and, uh, mullets. Crowds cheering for blood. Governors waiting outside to pick up their kids.

Now think Honda. It’s a natural, right?

At least that’s what Honda wants you to think. The Japanese carmaker has just signed on as the official automotive sponsor of the National Hockey League. The maker of the Civic and the Fit replaces longtime NHL sponsor Dodge, mother of the Ram 1500 Mega Cab with the 5.7-liter Hemi V-8. (To be fair, Honda does make one open-bed product, the Ridgeline, but c’mon, it doesn’t even come in an eight-cylinder model!)

Pairing gratuitous ice-based violence with the balletic precision of a company known for nimble engineering and fuel economy might not seem like a great, ahem, fit, but Honda has its reasons.

First and foremost are demographics. According to Tom Peyton, senior manager for advertising at Honda’s U.S. sales arm, hockey fans ‘live in the suburbs, are affluent and technically savvy.’ The average household income of a hockey fan is ...

$110,000, and Ridgeline drivers are almost 2.5 times more likely to watch hockey than other sports.

Honda also sees it as an opportunity to step up into major team sports. For years, Honda sponsored Major League Soccer, and it also backs the L.A. Marathon and the Honda Classic PGA event, while luxury brand Acura sponsored a Women’s Tennis Assn. event.

But, said Peyton, hockey was a chance for Honda to break into the ranks of major sports. 53 million people in Canada and the U.S. identify themselves as hockey fans, placing it right behind the big three sports of football, baseball and basketball. ‘The MLS, with all due respect, we don’t put it in the same category of sports as hockey,’ said Keith Wachtel, senior vice president of corporate sales and marketing for the NHL.

And it’s not as if Honda has zero rink experience. They don’t call Anaheim’s sports arena -- home to the Ducks -- the Honda Center for nothing. Honda forked over $60 million in 2006 to nab naming rights through 2021. According to Wachtel, Honda beat out four other automotive bidders for the rights, although he declined to disclose what the sponsorship deal cost.

Still, there are some questions about latching onto hockey right now. Always the smallest of the major sports, it’s spent most of the last decade losing ground relative to the biggies. The average rating for NHL regular-season games on Fox in the 1995-96 season was 2.1; last year, on NBC, it was 1.0. Meanwhile, the National Football League’s regular-season games on Fox have held steady. In 1997, regular-season NFL games had a 10.7 rating, and last year they matched that number.

Ominously for Honda, a regular-season MLS game in June (albeit with David Beckham playing) scored a 1.2 rating. Then again, in Canada, where the Honda Civic is the top-selling car, hockey has considerably stronger ratings than soccer.

Speaking of the Big Three, each of the major sports has an automotive sponsor. General Motors backs the NFL and Major League Baseball, while Toyota is tied up with the National Basketball Assn.

Honda contends that the hockey rink is a step in the right direction: into the mainstream. ‘We’re maturing,’ Peyton said. ‘We’re growing up as a U.S. brand.’

As for the hockey truck of the future, the Ridgeline, its sales are down 18% this year.

-- Ken Bensinger