“Follow the money” was the motto in the 1976 film “The Untouchables,” which traces the investigation into the Watergate affair. To understand the status of the National Hockey League (NHL) in North American sports, following the money is still good advice today. While basketball player Franz Wagner will receive almost $45 million per season from the Orlando Magic in the future, his ice hockey colleague Leon Draisaitl will receive $14.5 million per year from the 2025/2026 season. Now Draisaitl, who was born in Cologne, is not just anyone in the league, but will then be the highest-earning player in the entire NHL.
Although there will be no collection necessary for struggling stars with eight-figure annual salaries, these sums make it clear how much catching up there is for NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. At 6.8 billion, the league’s total revenue was just over half of the competition from basketball and baseball, and the NFL money printing machine was even able to report almost three times as much revenue.
While the hall occupancy rate is 97 percent, the income from tickets and sometimes absurd prices around game day (parking at the New York Islanders, for example, costs $40) is close to the ceiling, but there is a big problem with the TV rights , which you believe you can still turn.
For this season, a major partner, Amazon Prime, has been brought on board. Every Monday a game in Canada will now be shown nationwide exclusively on the streaming platform. In addition, “Coast to Coast” is a Thursday format that is intended to offer a conference similar to the NFL Redzone.
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„Follow the money“
The cooperation goes hand in hand with another of the now hardly manageable documentaries, all of which want to build on the success that Formula 1 had with “Drive to survive”. “Faceoff – Inside the NHL” can be seen worldwide and has the clear task of making the stars of the league visible and interesting. The documentation is only successful in the rare moments in which the audience is allowed a look into the cabin.
Amazon is not only helping the NHL to make the game more prominent worldwide, but also to be able to exert pressure on the upcoming negotiations for TV rights on the Canadian market. Although ice hockey is by far the number one sport there, it is still heard again and again that the current rights holder Rogers is making a significant loss with the 12-year contract worth a total of $5 billion.
The main driver for this is sport. No Canadian team has won the Cup since 1993 and since 2012 only two teams from the motherland of ice hockey have been in the Stanley Cup final. Draisaitl’s Edmonton Oilers came close to breaking the spell in June of this year, fighting back from a 3-0 defeat with three wins in a row, but then had to admit defeat to the Florida Panthers in the all-important seventh game.
The league also makes it clear that its priorities are clearly in the USA because of the higher revenue potential. When it became clear during last season that the Arizona Coyotes were moving, it was clear early on that the team would go to Salt Lake City, where it will initially play under the name Utah Hockey Team. Even in the NHL’s last two expansions, no Canadian cities, Las Vegas and Seattle, were included.
This season, Canadian fans have to hope that Edmonton or the Toronto Maple Leafs will bring the Cup back home. Maybe the NHL will be able to start the North American season with a real opening game and not with a match between two underdogs on a weekday afternoon, as was the case last Tuesday in St. Louis against Seattle. “Follow the money”.
