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."
Salvatore Galatioto, who runs a sports finance and advisory firm and is a marketing professor at Columbia, said the league has done a good job reaching beyond traditional markets, overcoming some of the unavoidable shortcomings of being expensive to play. Central to the game are the players, and none of this would be possible without a constructive working relationship with the NHL Players' Association, which may be at its most cooperative stage in decades. The league and union found common ground insaid. “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.
Executive VP Marketing Brian Jennings, who has been at the NHL for 33 years, said there is no shortage of people “knocking on the door" to get in on the boom. TikTok has repeatedly said that it’s no longer linked to China. A new Fortune investigation tells a more complicated story.