NEW YORK — Arenas are full, the NHL is a fixture on TV screens across North America, highlight-reel goals are talking points on a near-daily basis and “The Pat McAfee Show” even has a segment called “Hockey is Awesome."
“The league is going through a bit of a renaissance,” said Tom Gargiulo, chief marketing officer at Bodyarmor, whose deal to be the league's sports drink is the latest sponsorship agreement inked in recent years. “This sport is moving into the next phase of its evolution and is on a tremendous trajectory.”
Trying new things, including puck and player tracking and cartoon versions of games to draw in younger fans, has set the table for this success. Decades since the experiment of the glowing puck, experts credited the league for attracting and retaining a bigger audience in a crowded sports marketplace.
“It’s not rocket science: It’s the number of eyeballs watching your product,” he said. “They have done a really good job of expanding their fanbase, and that’s the key."Chief NHL Content Officer Steve Mayer has made that his life's work since joining in 2016, coming up with new and different ways to present a more-than-century-old sport, from the 2020 playoff bubble to outdoor games and a reimagined All-Star weekend.
“It’s a key to moving forward,” union executive director Marty Walsh said. “When I first started, I had a conversation with Gary Bettman, and our teams talked about working together and growing hockey-related revenue, growing the sport. ... We’re all vested in one direction.”The NHL still has work to do to catch up with the NFL , NBA and Major League Baseball , but it's not unrealistic to think $10 billion is attainable before the end of the decade.