The topic of NHL expansion has been a hot topic over the past decade. The team added two franchises to the league, the Vegas Golden Knights and the Seattle Kraken, since 2017.
Yet the NHL has given the impression that it hopes to grow even more in the years to come. With 32 teams currently in the league, it seems certain that there will eventually be 34, or even 36 organizations.
According to a recent report from CNBC’s Jake Piazzathis expansion could extend to Europe. He emphasizes that the foundations have already been laid in several ways. The league plays a few games each year in European cities as part of its NHL Global Series. When they play there, advertisements on helmets and jerseys have been moved to the European sectors of their American counterparts, such as when the New Jersey Devils swapped their usual Prudential sponsorship patch for their international holding company, PGIM.
Piazza also spoke with Irwin Kirshner, a media rights expert with experience expanding multiple sports leagues, about what this could mean for the NHL. Kirshner believes the potential of a team in Europe would create greater negotiating leverage for the league due to greater capacity and advertising reach.
“The more eyeballs you have, the more valuable the signal can be,” Kishner said. “And the more you can rely on sponsorship, the more you can pay the players, the richer the league becomes.”
Of course, an expansion franchise in Europe would present a multitude of challenges. The first would be travel. With the NHL World Series, the teams arrive several days before their matches and stay for about a week. Teams will play two games and take part in several league and community development activities. With a full-time team, travel logistics would be a huge hurdle.
Second, while the optimistic side of expanding into Europe suggests it will also expand the NHL player pool, there is a chance it could backfire. The NHL has already seen what happens when an organization in the United States becomes a maligned place for players (see the Atlanta Thrashers, Hartford Whalers and Arizona Coyotes as recent examples). A bad location could be a death sentence for an NHL organization, and the stakes would be even higher with the potential first European team.
It still seems a long way off, but the subject is gaining momentum in the league. The NHL wants to grow and it could become inevitable that the league moves to Europe. It’s just a matter of time.
