Women’s professional hockey is growing in popularity in North America, but there’s still a lot of work to do to catch up with men’s professional hockey.
On Wednesday, March 20th, 21,000 tickets were sold in less than 20 minutes at the “Centre Bell” for a women’s hockey game between Montreal and Toronto. This sale has been given the name “Duel at The Summit”. The cost of a ticket varied between 85$ to 244$, but at the origin, it was 32$ to 125$. Also, the moment that the game was sold out, it was already for resale.
At first, the game Montreal against Toronto on April 20th was supposed to take place at the ”Auditorium de Verdun”, but it was moved to the ”Centre Bell”. The point of changing the location was to evaluate the field women’s hockey market and see if the public’s reaction was going to be enthusiastic. ”Our fans have been asking for this game at the ”Centre Bell” since the start of the season. It’s exciting to know that we’ll be playing in the biggest field hockey arena in North America” said Danièle Sauvageau, the Montreal team’s general manager. However, a few next games will be at the “Auditorium de Verdun” and moreover, they are all sold out.
The season of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) started on January 1st. Before, this league was divided between the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL) and the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF), but due to an economic situation these leagues disappeared and afterwards, the PWHL was created. This league contains 157 players from 12 different countries and a total of six teams. Three are American and the three others are Canadian. The PWHL will be broadcasting on Radio-Canada, TSN and RDS.
There are some inequalities between men’s and women’s hockey, but there are three general factors. First, the advantage of men’s hockey is that it is more popular than women’s, so there is less investment mainly in financial terms. The second factor is the salary because a man in the NHL in his beginning career has a salary of about 935,000$ and a woman’s usual salary is between 35,000 and 80,000 dollars. Finally, it is more difficult to have big leagues including a lot of teams, because there are less women players than men players.
With more investment in several aspects, women’s hockey should be a success, but only the future will tell.
