Piece it all together, and more eyes are on the puck than ever before with the playoffs beginning this weekend.
“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.Higher Edmonton Oilers playoff ticket prices part of supply-and-demand 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.“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.
“We plan on getting there — how and when, obviously, will take some time,” chief business officer Keith Wachtel said. “Looking at hockey a bit differently than perhaps it was looked at a decade ago. It’s still the ultimate team sport, but we have such great players and personalities.”One challenge is getting fans who are focused on their own team to watch others.