This year, as the NHL laces up for the 2013-14 season’s opening day on October 1, one team, the Philadelphia Flyers, has hit across a simple yet innovative way to engage its fans during a time when sports content is limited to negotiations and trade talks: Its new Web series, “Flight Plan,” turns those business dealings into gripping content.

“You only have a certain amount of tickets to sell, but the biggest upside we see right now is in digital,” said Lauren Cochran, director of digital media for the Flyers. “It’s kind of something that can grow infinitely, and that’s where we’re putting our resources.”

That investment in digital has been fully legitimized with “Flight Plan,” whose first episode found 56,000 viewers tuning in overnight. Though technically a video-on-demand, its launch was treated as a TV show premiere, with a 7:00 p.m. show time on August 5. The release strategy “really made people drop what they’re doing and consume the content,” said Cochran. It also drove huge traffic to the Flyers website, which, like all team sites, has become an increasingly important one-stop-shop for not only news and information, but revenue drivers such as tickets and merchandise.

“Flight Plan’s” debut installment, dubbed “The War Room,” gave a behind-the-scenes look at the selection process that resulted in the Flyers’ 2013 first-round draft pick Samuel Morin, a choice that surprised many analysts. Set almost entirely in the bland hotel room where Flyers scouts convened to discuss the upcoming draft, it utilized skillful editing and suspenseful music to turn Flyers director of scouting Chris Pryor and his team into memorable characters, and built tension around the unlikely centerpiece of a whiteboard covered with player names. The follow-up episode, “Mean… Tough… Flyer,” followed Flyers executives on the floor of the Prudential Center during Draft Day. Both episodes dig out a suspenseful narrative from a side of the Hockey business rarely depicted onscreen, and ultimately create a deeper connection with Flyers fans by letting them get to know the personnel behind their team’s day-to-day operations.

“We believe that our fans are the best in the National Hockey League and that is evidenced by their constant craving for fresh content about their favorite team,” said Shawn Tilger, Flyers SVP of business operations. With ‘Flight Plan’ we feel like we are giving them a unique perspective on the Flyers that they have never had before. By making it an episodic feature with a storyline threaded throughout, we feel it will be able to periodically quench the unending thirst for content that such a great fan base demands.”

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