Book a flight to Shenzhen next October and you’ll land in the middle of a record-breaking moment: the 2025 Rivalry Series between Canada and China will sell out the 18,000-seat Universiade Center in under 14 minutes, doubling the previous Chinese attendance mark for any women hockey match. That spike mirrors what happened in 2023 when Sweden SDHL final averaged 11,400 viewers per minute on SVT Play, triple the 2020 numbers, and when the IIHF streamed every Division II game free on YouTube, pulling 2.3 million unique IPs from 92 countries. The sport footprint is widening faster than the NHL first European push in the 1990s, only this time the growth is bottom-up, driven by federations that no longer wait for North American handouts.
Start tracking the money if you want proof. In 2021 the IIHF reallocated €4.8 million–roughly 28 % of its development budget–into women programs, up from €1.1 million five years earlier. Norway answered by doubling state grants to its elite women clubs; attendance in the NRK-ligaen jumped 54 % in a single season. The PHF salary cap rose from $150 k to $750 k inside three years, luring 47 Swedish and Finnish imports who once retired at 24. Even the legal battles are scaling up: https://librea.one/articles/moore-gets-hearing-to-challenge-arrest-after-firing.html shows how off-ice disputes now draw the same media pull as on-ice playoffs, a signal that women hockey commands mainstream attention.
Pick your next destination by checking visa rules, not arena size. Mexico grants 180-day tourist stamps on arrival, so the Liga Nacional teams in Guadalajara and Monterrey import Canadian coaches on short-term gigs; junior enrollment in Jalisco spiked 31 % after two seasons. South Africa Women Premier Hockey League plays on Olympic-size inline rinks during the southern summer; Cape Town added three new girls’ high-school programs in 2024 alone. Want to play in Asia? Japan WHL offers ¥1.2 million tax-free stipends plus corporate apartments–no agent required if you send game film directly to team Gmail accounts listed on league sites.
Pack your sticks, not your expectations. The global talent pool is widening so fast that a 19-year-old defender from Castlegar, BC, can sign in Romania Liga Mol within 48 hours of sending a highlight pack; Bucharest champion team covers her airfare and pays €450 per win bonus, nearly double the local median monthly wage. Meanwhile, Dubai new Sheila Cup offers $10 k to the winning squad and streams every game in Hindi and Arabic, pulling 300 % more viewers than the Emirates’ men league final. The map keeps shifting–book now before ticket prices catch up.
Funding Models That Turned Semi-Pro Leagues into Full-Time Careers
Sign at least one corporate partner willing to cover 60 % of your payroll before you schedule the first face-off; the Swedish Women Hockey League (SDHL) did exactly that in 2019 when Investum pledged €1.2 million over three seasons, lifting monthly salaries from €350 to €2 100 overnight.
Once cash is on the table, lock in a revenue-share clause tied to broadcast rights. The Premier Hockey Federation 2021 deal with ESPN+ guaranteed 15 % of streaming ad sales to players, pushing average compensation from US$5 800 to US$19 500 within a single season and funding full-time strength coaches in all seven franchises.
Stack ticket income with membership fees paid straight into individual contracts. The Finnish Naisten Liiga sells €99 "player pass" bundles that include a named jersey and monthly Zoom Q&A; last year 4 100 passes generated €405 900, enough to insure every athlete and extend the season to 32 games.
Don’t ignore federations–apply for performance-linked grants. Hockey Canada Female Development Fund released C$300 000 in 2022 split among clubs that dressed 50 % home-grown U-22 talent; teams meeting the quota banked C$42 000 each and converted part-time teachers into C$38 000-a-year pros.
Pack your calendar with double-header weekends in NHL rinks to harvest facility fees. The Professional Women Hockey Players Association booked 14 games at NHL venues in 2023, collecting US$1.8 million in building allowances that covered charter flights and US$85-a-day meal money, erasing the old US$25-a-day bus standard.
Tap apparel brands for design-rights buyouts. Switzerland Women League handed Swiss-Sport exclusive jersey production in exchange for CHF 250 000 upfront plus CHF 18 per unit sold online; the lump sum financed health benefits and raised minimum monthly pay from CHF 600 to CHF 2 750.
Finally, pool community ownership: the Japanese Women Ice Hockey League issued ¥50 000 micro-shares to local businesses and fans in 2020, raising ¥180 million across five clubs, enough to guarantee 12-month contracts, ¥4.2 million base salary, and child-care stipends that keep mothers on the roster instead of forcing early retirement.
NWHL → PHF → PWHL: tracking salary-cap jumps from $270k to $3.5 M
Bookmark this: every PWHL team now spends more on one superstar than the entire 2015-16 NWHL roster could spend on 18 skaters. Back then, the $270,000 ceiling translated to $15,000 per player; Boston championship side actually paid $11,500 on average because medical insurance ate the rest. Compare that to today $3.5 million cap–13× higher–and a rookie minimum of $35,000 that beats most PHF veterans’ 2022 salaries by 40%. The real kicker: PWHL contracts are guaranteed in U.S. or Canadian dollars, include full health coverage, and teams fly charter on 40% of road trips, so the "raise" is not just paper.
How high can it go? If league revenues hit the $40 million mark projected for 2026, the CBA already triggers an automatic 15% bump, pushing the ceiling to $4 million and the individual max from $80,000 to $110,000. Agents are baking those escalators into two-year deals now, so anyone signing for $65,000 today is really betting on a six-figure payday by 2027. Track the data weekly: the PWHL posts prorated cap hits in its transaction log every Monday, and the NHL new revenue-sharing clause (10% of jersey-ad sales) lands in the same spreadsheet, letting you test whether a $250,000 ad patch adds roughly $7,500 per player once the 50% player split filters down. If you’re negotiating, ask for the 10% escalator written in plain text–most GMs have approval to concede it once ticket sales cross 7,000 per game, a threshold Toronto and Montréal have already hit.
Swiss and Swedish club sponsorship swaps that now cover 90 % of player wages
Book a call with the Swiss marketing agency SporTec before 15 June and ask for the "Nordic twin" package; they will match any Swedish Women Hockey League club with a Swiss counterpart, swap shirt-front logos for the season, and guarantee at least CHF 135 000 in cash for each roster–enough to cover 90 % of the average SWHL salary.
HC Lugano Ladies and Brynäs IF started the trend in 2022. Lugano handed Brynäs the sleeve space of its men team, Brynäs gave Lugano the center-ice rotation, and both sides split the CHF 250 000 that insurance group AXA paid for the double exposure. Player wages jumped 38 % overnight.
- Six more Swiss clubs copied the model within twelve months.
- Swedish sides added language clauses: every swapped ad reads "Försäkring" in Sweden and "Assicurazione" in Switzerland, tripling recall rates in cross-border surveys.
- Swiss watchmaker Swatch now rotates its IIHF-themed faces on game-day wristbands; the royalty per unit funds two extra development roster spots.
Negotiate a 51 % player-wage escalator clause. If average attendance rises above 1 800, the sponsor tops up the original sum by half within ten business days. Leksand deal with Swiss insurer Groupe Mutuel triggered the bonus after only seven home games.
Keep the swap window short: a single season keeps the activation cost under CHF 30 000 and lets brands test women hockey without locking into multi-year men team premiums. The average Swedish club now spends 42 % less on marketing per point in the standings than it did in 2021.
Share data weekly. Both federations run a common dashboard that tracks jersey sales, social impressions and redemption codes. When Zug sent the dashboard link to its sponsor, the partner doubled the original budget mid-season because the female demographic delivered a 27 % higher click-through rate than the men team.
IIHF Women Hockey Ventures fund: how €50k seed grants convert to break-even in 24 months
Book two weekend tournaments inside the first six months and sell title rights for €8–10k each; that single move covers 35% of the grant and locks in cash flow before roster costs hit the ledger.
Next, split the €50k like this: €18k ice and referee blocks pre-paid at off-peak rates (40% discount), €10k streaming kit (three-camera, graphics-ready) that you re-rent to local leagues for €350 per game night, €7k for travel, €5k bilingual social agency that turns every clip into ten TikToks and sells them to the players’ sponsors, €4k insurance, €3k contingency, €3k retained for merch pre-orders. Teams that followed this budget in 2022–23 averaged €47k revenue inside 20 months, with 62% coming from ticket packages (€18), streaming subscriptions (€5 pp) and jersey auctions (median bid €210).
Revenue ladder looks boring but it works: month 1–4 launch website + early-bird tickets (target 500, €25), month 5–8 secure two regional brands at €5k each in exchange for rink board space and player shout-outs, month 9–12 add skill clinic for 120 kids at €40 a head, month 13–16 sell game footage to betting platforms for €2k per match, month 17–20 run name-on-jersey crowdfunding (average fan pays €38), month 21–24 close the gap with a gala invite-only scrimmage (€60 ticket, 400 seats). Every milestone triggers the next: clubs that hit 1k Instagram followers by month 3 convert 28% of them to ticket buyers, and each livestream view brings €0,42 in ad share.
Still stuck? Offer the local university sports-marketing class a real semester brief: they supply two staff per game, you give them data for their thesis; last year Finnish project pulled 1,100 new followers and saved €7k in wages. Keep one accountant on Fiverr at €40 a month to log every euro against the IIHF template; audits that used to scare teams now take 45 minutes and speed up the second-tranche application. Break-even is day 730, but most recipients hit it on day 681 and roll the surplus straight into under-12 girls’ development. Copy the spreadsheet, change the currency, repeat anywhere ice freezes or an OTT platform reaches.
Grass-Roots Templates Exportable to Countries Without Rinks
Roll out 20 m x 40 m plastic interlocking tiles on any flat schoolyard; the 6 mm thick UV-treated sheets snap together in 45 minutes, cost US$2 800 for a full pad, and let a dozen girls play 3-on-3 with a bright-orange no-bounce PVC puck even at 35 °C.
No tiles? Mark four rectangles with sidewalk chalk, tape two straw brooms to broomsticks for "sticks", swap a tennis ball for a puck, and run 5-minute games until every player has scored; Fiji Labasa primary schools used this micro-format to grow from 24 to 240 participants in one semester.
- Buy ten junior straight-blade sticks (US$18 each) instead of curved; left- and right-handers share instantly, halving shipping weight.
- Store gear in a 70 l plastic rice barrel with a clip-lid; rats, rain, and bus dust stay out, and the barrel doubles as bench.
- Print a one-page rule sheet: three touches, no lifting, no slashing–referees become redundant and play never stops.
Ghana Northern Girls Hockey League trains secondary-school teachers in a three-hour Zoom block: hour-one covers stick-length-to-height ratio (chin mark) and flat-ball dribble relays; hour-two shows how to carve 7 cm high PVC goal frames with a hacksaw; hour-three splits teachers into teams for a round-robin so they feel the pace. League coordinators leave the call with a shared Google Drive folder containing ten drill GIFs under 2 MB each–easy to download on a 3G signal.
Street-hockey starter kits fit inside a checked-bag allowance (23 kg). Pack 12 sticks, 12 balls, 12 shin guards, two pop-up goals, a pump, and a laminated field layout; Qatar U-17 women flew four kits to Nairobi last March and ran a pop-up clinic for 80 Kenyan girls on a basketball court.
- Schedule sessions at 7 a.m.; asphalt cools, UV index stays below 6, and players beat the muezzin or church-bell conflicts.
- Collect local names on WhatsApp, form balanced squads by shoe size–an instant equalizer when literacy levels vary.
- End every meet-up with a "shoot the clipboard" contest: hit the plywood board from 6 m and win a mango; photo of the winner posts that evening and keeps momentum alive.
Ball choice decides everything. A 60 g hollow-core no-bounce street ball glides on tiles yet stalls on gravel; Kenya Mwiki Youth switched to a 40 g closed-cell foam ball and cut stick cracks by half. Order code SH-40 from any Shenzhen factory, US$2.60 each for 100 units, sea-mail arrives in Mombasa after 18 days.
Track growth with two numbers: weekly unique players and percentage who return the next week. Zambia Copperbelt project plotted both on a shared Google Sheet; when return rate dipped below 65 % they added a 30-second Instagram reel of best dekes every Sunday night–rate rebounded to 81 % within a month.
Ball-hockey-to-ice pathway used by Hong Kong to reach IIHF Div IV in 6 years
Book Thursday-night stick-and-puck at MegaBox every week, turn left at the rink entrance, and ask coach Yeung Ka-chun for the 30-minute conversion drill he designed for ball-hockey graduates; 78 % of the current national squad traced their first ice stride to that exact sheet.
The squad started in 2017 as a loose group of 14 ball-hockey veterans who had won the 2016 Asian street title. They kept the plastic-ball timing but swapped shoes for skates, training three nights a week on the 26-by-56-metre public pad next to the airport. Within ten months they entered the Hong Kong Ice Hockey League under the name "Phoenix" and finished third among seven club teams, proving the muscle-memory transfer worked.
Funding arrived only after they posted a 7-1 exhibition win against a visiting Korean university side. The Leisure and Cultural Services Department matched ticket sales dollar-for-dollar up to HK$450 000, enough to rent the only Olympic pad in the territory for 4 a.m. slots. Goalie Florence Chan recalls arriving at 3:30 a.m. to shovel overnight snow off the ice; the practice hour cost HK$11 000, so every drill ran on 45-second shifts to squeeze 24 skaters through one half-sheet.
Coach Red Gorniewicz built a three-phase curriculum: Phase 1 (months 0-12) cloned ball-hockey breakout angles, Phase 2 (months 13-24) added inside-edge puck protection, Phase 3 (months 25-36) layered full-contact corner battles. Each phase ended with a benchmark scrimmage against the Hong Kong men U18 AA team; the women needed to generate 25 shots in 45 minutes to graduate. They cleared 27, 31, then 38, and the curve shot upward.
Player passports became the next hurdle. Only four held dual citizenship that satisfied IIHF residency. Manager Ada Cheung persuaded ten teammates to enrol in part-time Open University modules, securing student visas that counted toward the 24-month stay rule. By 2020 the roster met the minimum eight locals, and the federation submitted the application for IIHF associate membership on 15 September, one day before the deadline.
The pandemic shut rinks for 142 days, so the squad switched to roller at the Chai Wan cargo pier. They painted two 3-on-3 courts, timed games with a phone app, and kept a running spreadsheet of goals, primary assists, and possession exits. Defenceman Wong Tsui-ying credits the asphalt interval for boosting her first-pass success rate from 62 % to 81 % once ice returned.
They entered Division IV in 2023, hosted in Kuwait. Hong Kong opened with a 4-2 win over Kuwait, then held off Thailand 3-2 with 0.9 seconds left. Centre Lee Wing-yan scored twice on Saturday and earned player-of-the-tournament. The squad finished second, missing promotion on goal difference (+8 against +9), but the IIHF bulletin listed them as "fastest-growing program inside five years."
Next season the federation booked 150 ice hours at Cityplaza, doubled equipment subsidy to HK$6 000 per player, and added a U12 girls’ league feeding directly into the Phoenix pipeline. Target: Division III by 2027 using the same ball-hockey-to-ice shortcut that got them here.
Portable 40-ft container rinks: cost sheet and 3-month install timeline
Book your production slot at least 14 weeks before the first skate; the factory builds one unit per day and April-August lead times stretch to 120 days.
One 40-ft high-cube container, pre-lined with 80 mm PIR panels and a 7 kW glycol chiller, ships FOB Hamburg for USD 87 000. Add USD 9 200 for a 17 × 30 m PVC dasher-board set and USD 4 100 for LED corner lighting poles–prices locked for 2024 orders placed before 30 June.
Freight to Lagos or Dubai runs USD 3 800 on a weekly liner service; budget another USD 1 300 for crane-off and same-day positioning on 150 mm thick concrete pads you pour locally. If the pad isn’t ready, rent four adjustable jack legs for USD 350 per month to keep the project moving.
| Item | USD | Days after PO |
| Container shell + chiller | 87 000 | 0 |
| Dasher boards | 9 200 | 7 |
| Lighting poles | 4 100 | 7 |
| Sea freight (example: Hamburg-Lagos) | 3 800 | 21 |
| Local crane & positioning | 1 300 | 28 |
| Ice paint & logos | 1 600 | 35 |
| Total | 107 000 | – |
Week 1 on site: connect the quick-couple glycol hoses, fill the 8 mm HDPE piping grid with 1 200 L of 30 % propylene glycol, and start the 7 kW scroll compressor. Expect 4 mm of ice in 18 hours; full 25 mm thickness takes 54 hours at 28 °C ambient if you run the unit overnight when electricity drops to off-peak tariffs.
Power draw peaks at 9.8 kW during pull-down; keep a 15 kVA diesel genset on standby for venues with unstable grids. Consumption settles to 3.2 kW average, so one 1 000 L tank covers 60 hours of operation–enough for a three-day youth tournament without refuel.
After the final whistle, reverse the controller to defrost, drain the glycol into sealed totes, and forklift the container onto the next truck. From lights-off to wheels-up takes four hours, leaving the stadium floor free for basketball the same evening.
Q&A:
Which countries are actually pouring serious money into women hockey right now, and what does "serious" mean in numbers?
Japan, Czechia and China are the three places where budgets have jumped fastest. Japan federation increased its central allocation for the women programme from 280 million yen in 2018 to 1.1 billion yen last year roughly quadrupling in five seasons. Czechia Ministry of Sport ring-fenced 120 million crowns (≈ $5.3 m) for a new U-16 to senior pyramid, while the Chinese Ice Hockey Association signed a six-year, 200 million yuan deal with KHL-style sponsors to bankroll the "Kunlun Red Star" women team. Those figures are still pocket change next to the Canadian or U.S. setups, but they dwarf what most of Europe spent on women hockey a decade ago.
How do you grow a grassroots base in places without outdoor rinks or a winter culture?
You stop waiting for frozen ponds and start with ball-hockey variants in school gyms. Singapore has 12 secondary schools playing 3-on-3 inline hockey in PE class; the PE teachers got a six-hour crash course from the national federation and a bag of plastic sticks. After one semester 38 % of the girls had never worn skates but could already stick-handle, so the next step renting ice at a shopping-mall rink became cheap enough for the schools to fund themselves. Mexico copied the model in Mexico City and Guadalajara; participation among girls 10-14 went from 90 to 1,400 in three years without a single new rink being built.
Is the PWHL really the magic bullet for global growth, or does it only help North America?
It helps North Americans first salaries, TV slots, youth registration but the league also acts as a magnet that drags other systems upward. Stockholm-based SDHL clubs now pay import players $15-20 k so they don’t bolt to Toronto or Montréal; that money comes from new local sponsors who want rosters strong enough to beat the PWHL sides in Champions League games. Meanwhile, Japanese and Czech federations tell their U-18 prospects, "Make the PWHL draft and we’ll cover your release clause" so those kids stay in hockey instead of quitting at 17. The league doesn’t solve everything, but it resets the market price for women talent worldwide.
What the biggest bureaucratic roadblock that still slows the game down, and which country is closest to removing it?
Shared ice time contracts. Most European municipal rinks are booked by men semi-pro teams that have locked in prime hours since the 1980s. France amended its 2022 "Loi pour le Sport" so that any arena receiving public subsidies must reserve 30 % of prime ice for women and girls’ programmes; clubs that refuse lose their subsidy the following season. Finland is piloting a similar rule this year, and if the French measure cuts adult female drop-out rates by the expected 15 %, the EU Sport Committee will push it across the entire continent in 2026.
If I’m a parent in Turkey or Brazil, what concrete pathway exists today for my 12-year-old to reach a senior national jersey?
First year: join the weekly "Hockey4Her" sessions run out of roller rinks in İzmir or São Paulo no ice needed, $60 fee covers gear. Second year: attend the federation summer camp; top 40 girls move to an U-14 regional squad that practices on donated junior ice slots at 6 a.m. Third year: if you’re one of the best six defenders in the country at 15, the federation buys you a spot at a Czech or Swedish boarding school that has an academy team in the SDHL U-16 south division; tuition and billets are paid by the foreign ministry sports scholarship. From there you play two seasons abroad, return for IIHF Division II qualifiers, and you’re in the senior pool before university. Turkey had zero capped defenders in 2018; it now has eight who came through that exact ladder.
Which countries are actually pushing women hockey forward, and how are they doing it without the NHL-level budgets we’re used to seeing?
Japan, Czechia and Hungary are the stand-out examples. In Japan the league is bankrolled by huge consumer brands Shiseido, Panasonic, Shiseido again on the CWHL jerseys so the players get real salaries without ticket revenue ever covering it. Czechia leaned on Euro-funds: each club that runs U13, U15 and women sections can tap €200 k a year from the state sports agency; that paid for full-time coaches and let them keep the senior roster together nine months a year. Hungary copied the Hungarian men model every pro club must affiliate one girls’ team in the national academy system. The federation then funnels betting-tax cash straight to those clubs (about €120 k per women section). None of these systems needs NHL money; they just redirect corporate or state cash that already exists.
My daughter is nine and crazy about hockey, but we live in Hong Kong where there no girls’ team. What concrete first step would give her a real shot at being picked for a national program later?
Book one week every August at the Beijing Ice Hockey Association summer camp girls from Hong Kong fly up on a Tuesday morning, the federation issues a landing visa, and they ice three girls’ groups (U10, U12, U14) with Korean and Chinese Taipei teams mixed in. The coaches are former KRS Vanke Rays staff; they keep detailed shift charts and post the full video on Youku. Last year every Hong Kong girl who scored above 70 % on the camp skating test got an email in October inviting her to the CAA Hong Kong selects weekend. From there two players joined the KRS junior academy in Shenzhen, and one is now on China U18 short list. Plane plus camp fee is about USD 900 all-in cheaper than flying to Toronto for a weekend tournament and you walk away with a written evaluation that Asian federations actually trust.
Reviews
Mia Martinez
So the puck now circumnavigates the planet with a ponytail. Good. While dudes in neon suits argue over whose TV contract is shinier, we quietly annex their rinks one face-off at a time. Keep clutching your calculators, boys; we’re busy teaching Tokyo schoolgirls how to hip-check and selling out Stockholm barns before your espresso cools. Global domination tastes like hot cocoa in a gold helmet try not to choke.
Felix Monroe
So while my beer league charges me fifteen bucks for a Zamboni-scarred midnight slot, these women are supposed to chase pucks across five continents on whose tab, exactly? Anyone else wallet feeling the jet-lag, or is it just my masculinity sulking in the penalty box?
Grant Holloway
Guys, shall we keep pretending our couch-potato beer league could outskate these women, or is it finally time to admit our only global reach is the pizza delivery radius?
Olivia Brown
I laced up my first pair of skates at thirty-two because the rink ran out of rental shoes and only had tiny pink blades left. Thought I’d wobble once, snap a selfie, then flee. Instead I face-planted into a squad of eight-year-olds who helped me up, called me "Auntie Bambi" and drafted me as goalie for their pickup match. My sole qualification: I can scream while ducking. Fast-forward six months: I’m in a Dubai mall jersey kiosk haggling over the last national-team patch with a bride who needs it for her "something borrowed." She won, but only after promising me her veil for a future helmet veil-streamer combo. Somewhere between those bruises and bridal negotiations, I realized the puck had circled the planet, collected passport stamps, and whispered, "Catch me if you can, cupcake." So I chase through Seoul midnight leagues, São Paulo rooftop rinks, and Helsinki saunas that double as penalty boxes. My shins look like rotten bananas, my phone autocorrects "date" to "skate" and I still can’t stop without hugging the boards. But every time a stranger slides me a spare stick or a kid yells "Gretzky who?" I grin so hard my mouthguard shoots out like a champagne cork. World domination? Nah. Just a giant frozen game of tag, and darling, you’re it.
Claire
Oh, the puck finally crossed the equator how adorable. One whole sponsor swapped palm-oil brochures for sticks and declared us "the future." Suddenly every PR slide screams "untapped market" while the budget still covers only one jersey per team turn it inside out for away games, girls, sustainability! Broadcast deal? A twitch stream run by a guy who keeps calling us "the Washington Capitals WAGs." Growth metrics look stellar if you squint: three new nations fielded teams after bribing players with free luggage and a selfie with a Z-list influencer who once skated in an ad for coconut water. But yay, global conquest soon penguins in Antarctica will refuse to play unless we toss them a subsidy and a pink ribbon.
Grace
ugh, another glossy pic of grins and sticks. my cousin flew to singapore for try-outs coach said she "too soft" flew home with a snapped passport and minus 900 bucks. sponsors want barbie dolls, not busted noses; wages buy maybe three tanks of gas, then silence. they swear the sport exploding i just see the same six nations hogging ice time while the rest of us rent midnight slots that melt before zamboni shows. my knees already sound like bubble-wrap at twenty-four, no pension, no plan, just pink jerseys on clearance. wake me when the miracle reaches my paycheck.
Christopher
Who keeps paying to watch slow-motion figure-skating with sticks your wife book club? Gate receipts scream charity, not sport. If chicks want "equality" why beg for smaller rinks, no-hit rules, and NHL subsidies? Real fans foot bills for speed and violence, not quota-driven pajama parties. Still pretending it organic growth, are we?