NHL announces new marketing campaign to create additional revenue

PUBLICATION

Joshua Deeds
October 3, 2022 (7:20 PM)

SHARE THIS STORY

The NHL isn't a dinosaur when it comes to advertisements anymore, as it was reported today that they are removing traditional signage for digital ad setups.

The digital space will be primarily for advertisements, DED will also allow for flexibility to use the space for in game-graphics, statistics and goal celebrations.

It's been reported by Forbes that Sports Betting is upping its ad buys in the sports world, as the Fourth Quarter of the year is driven by holiday spending.

Historically, advertising in fourth quarter has been the most expensive of the year driven by high demand of the holiday season. Traditional product categories that ramp up their marketing budgets include retailers, toys/games, apparel, alcoholic beverages and movie studios. Plus every other year political ads plunk down billions of ad dollars. New to the list will be sports betting.

This explains the motivation for Bettman to make such a decision, as the NHL will be receiving ad buys from European Sportsbooks.

Digitally enhanced dasher boards allow sportsbooks to advertise "locally," appearing on the boards for road games to the audience watching back in the home market. That's important, considering not every NHL market has legalized wagering and not every sportsbook has clearance to operate in markets that do.

It's been reported that Sports Betting is seasonally focused, which makes sense as in Fall the NFL and NHL kick into gear for pre-season action.

Sports Betting Revenue: Revenue for sports betting has been climbing. For the first half of 2022 revenue totaled just over $3 billion compared to $4.3 billion for all of last year. Morgan Stanley forecasts revenue to reach $7 billion by 2025. Also, in 2021 Americans bet $57.2 billion on sporting events, a year-over-year increase of 165%.

Bettman will deny CTE up and down, but when he moves for the owners it's a gravy train and this move is not-so dinosaur-like, compared to the usual decisions made.

The first time the NHL put advertisements on their boards, was in 1981 for the Minnesota North Stars, which included local and national businesses advertising. With the DED system, local advertisers can get ad-time home and away as well.

"What this does is allow clubs to sell as many regional game broadcasts as they're able to in their market," Wachtel said. "Also, competitors come into everyone else's market. So, every time the Rangers play in Philadelphia, Chase [Bank] has to see Wells Fargo ads coming back into their very important New York market. You can now avoid that issue, if it's important to own your own market."

You now get ads on helmets, jersey and DED's, are you sold yet?

POLL
Are you a fan of the new digital marketing?
Yes, it's cool	14	12.5 %
No, I don't like it	73	65.2 %
It's fine as long as it doesn't change midplay	25	22.3 %
List of polls