Thrilling On-Ice Action Is Driving League-Record Revenues

After two and a half tough years, the NHL is back in business.

On Wednesday, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said that the league is tracking for record revenues in excess of $5.2 billion for the 2021-22 season. After years of steady growth, the league had been expecting to hit $5 billion for the first time in the 2019-20 season, before the sports world was stopped in its tracks by the Covid-19 pandemic in March of 2020.

“I am delighted that after two and a half years, things are actually feeling normal,” said Bettman at his media availability at Ball Arena in Denver, ahead of Game 1 of the 2022 Stanley Cup Final between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Colorado Avalanche.

In-person press conferences, jam-packed arenas and handing out the Stanley Cup in the month of June: all very good signs for a league that had to make some major adjustments to stay operational as the world figured out how to navigate its way through a pandemic.

In August of 2020, the league mounted its playoffs in two fan-free bubbles. The Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup at nearly empty Rogers Place in Edmonton on Sept. 28, 2020 — about two weeks before a normal regular season would have began.

The next campaign was condensed to 56 games, started in January of 2021 and featured a revamped divisional alignment that eliminated cross-border travel between the U.S. and Canada. Bettman acknowledged that the league’s lost revenues had reached the billion-dollar level as the 2021 season began in mostly fan-free or restricted-attendance settings.

As the campaign wore on and Covid restrictions began to lift, arenas got fuller. Cross-border matchups returned during the playoffs. And the Tampa Bay Lightning repeated as Stanley Cup Champions in front of a season-high 18,110 fans at Amalie Arena on July 7, 2021.

In 2021-22, the NHL returned to its regular 82-game regular season and usual divisional formats — except with the Arizona Coyotes moving to the Central Division to make room for the expansion Seattle Kraken in the Pacific, and 105 games postponed and rescheduled, largely due to Covid issues.

The league also kicked off a pair of new seven-year U.S. broadcast partnerships — a primary deal reportedly worth $2.8 billion with Walt Disney/ABC/ESPN and a secondary deal reportedly worth $1.57 billion with Warner Discovery/Turner Sports/TNT.

At over $620 million per season, those revenues more than tripled the $200 million per season that the league was receiving under its previous agreement with NBC Sports. And through the 2022 Conference Finals, U.S. ratings have been strong: up by 18% compared to 2019 for the Eastern Conference Final between the Lightning and the New York Rangers on ESPN, and up by 13% compared to 2019 for the Western Conference Final between the Avalanche and the Edmonton Oilers on TNT.

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the NHL’s corporate business has also been thriving. “In the last 18 months, we have renewed or signed new corporate partnerships valued at three quarters of a billion dollars,” Bettman said.

Earlier on Wednesday, the league announced the renewal of its longstanding North American partnership with Pepsico, which will extend past 20 years by the end of this latest agreement. Thursday brought the announcement of a new multiyear global sponsorship with Caterpillar that will launch this fall, focused on recognizing the people who manufacture, sell and operate Cat products and services as the brand becomes the official heavy equipment and industrial power sponsor of the NHL.

When the league named Hyundai and Genesis as its new Canadian automotive partners last month, NHL senior vice president of North American business development Kyle McMann said that the league now has more than 60 corporate sponsorship deals in place across the world. Each one contributes to those record revenues and, in the not-too-distant future, the shortfall that has caused uncomfortable downward pressure on the players’ salary cap will be erased.

“Within two, possibly creeping into three years, we anticipate resuming the more regular increases that people had been growing to expect from the salary cap,” Bettman said Wednesday.

On Thursday, that number for the 2022-23 season was made official. As projected, the cap ceiling will be $82.5 million, a $1 million increase from 2021-22. The lower limit, or cap floor, will be $61 million, up from $60.2 million.

At the heart of all the positive financial news, says Bettman, is the state of the game itself. In the 2021-22 season, goal-scoring hit levels not seen since the mid-90s as the league’s young guns raised the bar for skill and speed. And the playoffs have been a thrill ride, with five of eight first-round series reaching the seven-game limit and one of the league’s marquee franchises, the Rangers, reaching Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final after four seasons essentially outside the playoff picture (they qualified in 2020 thanks to the expanded 24-team field for the bubble, but were swept in the best-of-five qualifying round by the Carolina Hurricanes).

“Our league is strong, the strongest it has ever been,” Bettman concluded. “Our clubs are strong and stable, the strongest and most stable they have ever been. Our business is thriving, and our game on the ice, as I previously described, is sensational.”

The Stanley Cup Final looks like it will continue to bring edge-of-your-seat excitement. The home side, the Avalanche, took Game 1 over the Lightning in overtime on Wednesday, by a 4-3 score. Game 2 goes Saturday from Ball Arena in Denver (8 p.m. ET, ABC).