After 17 years Coca-Cola has decided to let its promotional deal with the NHL expire. Instead, a source at Coke told Bully that they are beefing up and expanding their 21-year relationship with the NBA and believed that the NHL was not a secure long-term marketing partner or for the company’s Powerade, bottled water and other beverages and snacks in North America.

My read: Coke is cutting and running. The NHL is putting a deal together now with PepsiCo to replace Coke but at likely at fire sale proportions. PepsiCo will sign on and get a deal done just to make it look like they beat out Coke for the promotion but that isn’t the case.

ESPN has turned its back on the league and now Coke and a number of other huge companies. Whose next? Put your money on NBC.

Those TV ratings are what advertisers use as a bible before they write their big checks … If no one is watching the game, no one is watching the commercial. Plus Coke is a major marketing partner with ESPN and used the NHL and ESPN for heavy cross promotions in the last 4 years. No ESPN … No Coke. You wanna watch hockey on OLN? Then drink Pepsi.

Any way you slice it, losing Coke as a major sponsor hurts the NHL. When number one brands like Coke and ESPN say adios … we’re talking dominoes here folks.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 22nd, 2006 at 10:27 am and is filed under Bully's Perspective. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.