Chief Gary Bettman boasts about business success of NHL, ice hockey -NHL News
The commissioner of the professional hockey league, National Hockey League (NHL), Gary Bettman, has spoken high of recent financial success of the sports of hockey and its transformation on pure business grounds.
He was speaking to delegates and attendees in "Hockey Analytics" session of the annual event of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Bruins territory in Boston on Friday, March 02, 2012.
Bettman, who received due credit and applauds over turning the league into a profitable business, said that all NHL franchises were pursuing the agenda of business success more than ever before.
He remarked:
"None of the leagues were in the businesses we are now."
He further added:
"When I started at the NHL [in 1993] there was no NHL.com, no NHL Network, no NHL Radio. We have maybe 40 people working for the League. Now we have 500. All sports leagues were strictly scheduling arms and rules enforcement arms.”
ESPN personality, Michael Wilbon, who earlier introduced the NHL chief to the audience, credited him for helping the office in increasing its licensing revenues "from $275 million in the mid-1990s to $1.3 billion."
He added that the league overall reaches the annual earning figure of $2.8 billion, which was recorded during the last fiscal year, reflecting on the business success of the sports activity.
Some of the measures which were introduced by the new chief included the media platforms promotion, product licensing and expansion of ice hockey to European markets.
The sports is now played in the UK, Germany, France and other countries of the region with more success than it could have been achieved before.
It was noted by the delegates that since joining of Bettman as the NHL boss, professional hockey leagues have evolved around faster and with greater success.
Boston GM, Peter Chiarelli, who served on the "Hockey Analytics" panel on Friday, March 02, 2012, later provided an insight of the growth in the business.
He, at the same time, threw light on his own career and shared different experiences that helped him learning the tricks of the trade while working at the front office of Ottawa Senators.
The GM also emphasised on the faster pace of the game of hockey and difficulties the staff finds in tracking and extracting the data on different aspects of the game.
He said it was particularly difficult to extract the type of data that can easily be computer-modelled and stored.
Yet he noted that since development of different franchises on modern lines, there is a remarkable improvement in collection and maintenance of database.
Other delegates from different walks of life also addressed on the occasion to highlight different aspects of data collection and information management systems.
Tags: