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Joining the Clubs
The Business of the National Hockey League to 1945
J. Andrew Ross
Cloth $49.95s
| 978-0-8156-3383-9
| 2015
ebook 978-0-8156-5293-9
"The most comprehensive history to date of the NHL’s rise from just another league to the center of control over the development of hockey in Canada and much of the USA. The book is very important because of its depth and breadth."—Stephen Hardy, University of New Hampshire
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J. Andrew Ross is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Guelph in Ontario. He has published numerous articles and chapters on the history of business, and has edited a collection of biographies of entrepreneurs.
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Book Description »[Close »]
How did a small Canadian regional league come to dominate a North American continental sport?
Joining the Clubs: The Business of the National Hockey League to 1945 tells the fascinating story, offering the play-by-play of cooperation and competition among owners, players, arenas, and spectators that produced a major league business enterprise.
Ross explores the ways in which the NHL organized itself to maintain long-term stability, dealt with its labor force, and adapted its product and structure to the demands of local, regional, and international markets. He argues that sports leagues like the NHL pursued a strategy that responded both to standard commercial incentives and also to consumer demands that the product provide cultural meaning. Leagues successfully used the cartel form—an ostensibly illegal association of businesses that cooperated to monopolize the market for professional hockey—along with a focus on locally branded clubs, to manage competition and attract spectators to the sport. In addition, the NHL had another special challenge: unlike other major leagues, it was a binational league that had to sell and manage its sport in two different countries. Joining the Clubs pays close attention to these national differences, as well as to the context of a historical period characterized by war and peace, by rapid economic growth and dire recession, and by the momentous technological and social changes of the modern age.
View other series books on Sports and Entertainment.
6 x 9, 440 pages, 14 black-and-white illustrations, 3 figures, 1 map, 2 tables, notes, bibliography, index
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