The NHL and MLBAM last night in N.Y. unveiled the planned relaunches of NHL.com, the official NHL mobile app and its out-of-market packages, representing the largest tangible results thus far from the major digital and linear media partnership struck last summer between the NHL and MLB. The NHL next Monday is slated to debut a wide variety of MLBAM-rebuilt products following a furious development effort this fall by baseball’s digital arm. The NHL’s out-of-market package, currently known as GameCenter Live, will be rebranded as NHL.TV. A dark, text-heavy design for NHL.com will be replaced by a fully responsive design using far more white space and large-scale photos, similar to ESPN.com’s relaunch last year. A new mobile product, NHL Premium, will offer live video of the final five regulation minutes, overtimes, and shootouts of out-of-market games for $2.99 per month. Additionally, a reworked NHL mobile app will feature far more customization options, including a wide array of specific push notifications, as well as much more visual alignment with NHL.com. “These new platforms are going to give us the ability to offer more content to the hockey fan and it’s also going to make it more user friendly,” said NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. “We couldn’t be more excited and more pleased with the start of this relationship.” The reworked products will be publicly shown this weekend at the NHL Fan Fair in Nashville, held in conjunction with the All-Star Game. MLB President of Business & Media Bob Bowman will make a presentation at this weekend's NHL BOG meetings. Bowman called the in-season transition for the NHL’s digital products from NeuLion to MLBAM a “high-wire act,” but praised all the parties involved for a smooth switch. “The key for us is to treat the content well. The content is phenomenal,” Bowman said of the NHL. “This is a lesson we’ve learned from baseball we’re applying here, too."
TECHNICAL DETAILS: Monday will also see the debut of redesigned NHL apps for connected TV devices such as Apple TV, Roku and PlayStation 4. Certain devices will receive NHL video at 60 frames per second, twice its prior peak and a level MLBAM has not yet hit with its own baseball games, but intends to for the ’16 season. Along similar lines, Bowman predicted the NHL work would create a symbiotic relationship in which hockey would receive the fruits of baseball’s prior digital learnings, but also be first to market on some innovations developed through the partnership. Bettman said the NHL offering authenticated in-market game access part of the new digital suite of products remains “a work in progress,” and he offered no timetable for resolution. A new studio for the NHL Network, which last fall began operations out of MLB Network facilities in Secaucus, N.J., is slated for completion in April. The NHL and MLBAM intend to offer after the All-Star Break a partial-season package of NHL.TV covering the duration of the ’15-16 season, but did not disclose a price for that.
