There has been much speculation that the Rangers will close out Yankee Stadium with a New Year’s Day hockey game against, perhaps, the Boston Bruins, with NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol pushing for the Yankee Stadium grand finale as an NBC showcase event. There is one problem that needs to be overcome, though: NBC’s deal with the NHL is done after this June’s Stanley Cup playoffs, and based on the weekly ratings the NHL is generating, there is a real possibility that NBC Universal will decide to not to renew its revenue-sharing deal with the league.

Would NBC continue its relationship with the NHL based on the opportunity to get the television rights to the last-ever event at Yankee Stadium, while having to live with poor ratings the rest of the season? NBC could promote that game for weeks on its Sunday Night Football telecasts and also reach into its archives, as it was NBC who broadcast the first World Series television games. NBC also broadcast “The Greatest Game Ever” — the 1958 NFL Championship Game between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts — from Yankee Stadium.

Ebersol would like another big event, such as the outdoor contest that was held on New Year’s Day in Orchard Park, N.Y., when the Pittsburgh Penguins played the Buffalo Sabres at Ralph Wilson Stadium on a cold and snowy day. That game drew a 2.4 in overnight ratings, which was better than expected. But since then, NHL regular-season games on NBC have been at 1.0 or below, and that again has brought up the viability of the NHL on American network television.

There have been a number of reports that suggest that ESPN is interested in broadcasting NHL games again and would be interested in picking up NBC’s portion of the American national TV deal. Right now, the NHL is locked into a deal with the Comcast-owned Versus cable TV network through 2011. Versus has seen audience growth in the 2 1/2 seasons it has carried the games, and it has recently re-upped for three more seasons. The audience for a Versus game generally is slightly more than a quarter of a million viewers per network showing — but that is much better than last year’s average of about 200,000.

The NHL has been meeting with NBC, ESPN, and Versus in an attempt to get their TV contacts settled for next season and beyond. Versus had no problem with the NBC-NHL partnership, as it is a weekend package during the regular season, while Versus has the regular-season games on Monday and Tuesday nights, along with the league’s All-Star Game, selected games from the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs, exclusive coverage of the conference finals, and the first two games of the Stanley Cup finals. NBC gets the other five Stanley Cup playoff games, if the series goes seven games. Versus also shows a package of NHL highlights and provides a weekly review program on broadband.

If NBC Universal decides not to renew its revenue-sharing deal with the NHL, could ESPN peacefully co-exist with a cable competitor such as Versus? ESPN and Time Warner’s TNT share the NBA cable TV package and cross-promote games on the two networks. That should indicate that Versus and ESPN can work together. Since Comcast is a cable television multiple systems operator that has cut deals with Disney to allow the various Disney networks (including the Disney Channel and all the ESPN channels) on its cable systems, it would seem that a Versus-ESPN partnership is not out of the question. A major question that would need to be resolved, though, is whether Versus would demand a reduction in rights fees if ESPN enters an NHL cable TV contract. This season, Versus paid the 30 NHL owners about $72 million in rights fees, or about $2.5 million a team. That figure will go up slightly in 2008–09 and the following two seasons, but the package will be somewhat diminished if Versus gives up some of its playoff exclusivity, as the playoffs are a time when ratings increase.

So where does this leave NBC? The final sports event at Yankee Stadium will be a big ratings boost, because it will be the last event, and both sports and non-sports consumers will have an interest in the event — not necessarily the hockey game itself. The Orchard Park New Year’s Day game had a massive hook for the viewer: Would the proposed New Year’s game be played in elements such as cold and snow? That remains to be seen for this game. The Yankee Stadium game would generate interest because people are saying their final goodbye to the House That Ruth Built, which was rebuilt in 1974–75. Is that enough for Ebersol and his bosses at General Electric to justify one more year of the NHL?

In the end, money will dictate whether the Bronx ballpark gets to close its door after an NHL game. NBC would have to sign a new deal with the NHL to make the Yankee Stadium closing an NHL event on New Year’s Day 2009. It would not make sense to broadcast the game on Versus, which still does not reach the entire American cable TV universe, or ESPN, where it would become a niche event for sports fans alone. The final sports event at Yankee Stadium may come down to a meeting of the minds of the chief executive officer of General Electric, Jeff Immelt; Ebersol; the commissioner of the NHL, Gary Bettman; the Steinbrenner family, and others — instead of coming down to a final out being recorded somewhere on its famous field.

evanjweiner@yahoo.com