NHL ad sponsorship revenue up 66% this season and Merchandise sales rise 22 pct for playoffs.
Record viewer numbers during the Chicago Blackhawks' run to the Stanley Cup title helped fuel a 66% rise in National Hockey League advertising and sponsorship revenue, a top league executive said.
The Blackhawks' series-clinching Game 6 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers garnered the highest television ratings in the United States in 36 years.
"It was a great Stanley Cup run, really across every possible metric .... Our fans are consuming more hockey," NHL Chief Operating Officer John Collins said in a telephone interview on Monday.
The league said its annual growth rate for advertising and sponsorship revenue, which includes sales for NHL.com and NHL Network, has been close to 66% for three consecutive years.
Merchandise sales for the entire playoffs were up 22% and the number of unique visitors on the NHL.com website rose 17 percent for the playoffs after a 29 percent gain during the regular season.
"Going into the playoffs, if you would have said we would lose Crosby and Ovechkin fairly early in the playoffs ... you'd be hard pressed to think you'd end up having one of the best Stanley Cup finals in 36 years," he added, referring to the upsets of teams on which all-stars Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin play.
Some analysts have pointed to struggles in the NHL's U.S. southeastern and southwest markets -- including the Phoenix Coyotes' bankruptcy -- as clouding the league's prospects outside its traditional markets in Canada and the Northeast and Midwest United States.
However, Collins said a renaissance in markets such as Los Angeles and a new crop of younger stars are helping the North American sports league.
He said the North American sports advertising market seems to have recovered and is starting to heat up. "That bodes well for us going into next year," Collins said.
The NHL is expanding the number of events on its calendar, including plans for two outdoor hockey games next season, as well as a season-launching event in Toronto, he said.
It also will continue its push in new technologies such as a mobile application with Verizon Wireless that was launched late in the season.
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