• by Tanya Gazdik , June 8, 2015

The Chicago Blackhawks and New York Rangers are at the top when it comes to fan loyalty, according to Brand Keys 2015 Sports Fan Loyalty Index Scores NHL Team Loyalty.

Conversely, the Colorado Avalanche and Florida Panthers are at the bottom.

Despite how they fare on the ice, fan loyalty “represents the ultimate trophy a sports marketer can win,” says Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys founder and president.

According to 225 fans in each of the teams’ own local media areas, the current 2015 NHL top five are as follows, with last year’s rank in parentheses:  Chicago Blackhawks (1), New York Rangers (2), Montreal Canadiens (8), St. Louis Blues (4), Boston Bruins (2) and Pittsburgh Penguins (5).

The bottom five are: Columbus Blue Jackets (30), Phoenix Coyotes (27), Buffalo Sabres (27), Winnipeg Jets (28), Florida Panthers (22) and Colorado Avalanche (23).

Win-loss ratios may be the only thing when it comes to a playoff championship and the rule-of-thumb is that win-loss ratios contribute up to a 20% bump in a team’s loyalty. To NHL fans, loyalty in professional hockey is a little different from other Major League Sports, says Passikoff.

“Its contribution to loyalty is higher for the NHL,” he says. “About 10% more, so winning accounts for a larger loyalty jump in hockey for a number of reasons: first, the sport moves faster than others, so there’s a bit more attention paid to the Pure Entertainment driver wherein wins and losses reside. Also the scores are always a lot closer in hockey.”

For the NHL, the Authenticity driver correlates highly to at-home attendance figures, and makes a slightly higher contribution to engagement and loyalty than it does for the NFL, MLB, or the NBA. The Tampa Bay Lightning, which made finals this year and were in the top 60% in terms of attendance moved up from #26 last year to #8 this year.

While hockey fans will have their favorite players, the protective equipment makes it hard to instantaneously identify individual players, so Fan Bonding makes a slightly smaller contribution in this sport, he says.

While the final scores and game attendance tend to contribute more to loyalty rankings for professional hockey, all of the emotionally based, predictive drivers have to be taken into account when measuring NHL team loyalty, he says.

The four emotional drivers of fan loyalty are pure entertainment (how well a team does and, as noted, a bit more important for professional hockey), authenticity (how well they play as a team and do fans actually show up to root for their home team), fan bonding (are there players that are particularly respected and admired?) and history and tradition (has the game and the team become part of fans’ and community rituals, institutions and beliefs?)