At next month’s World Cup of Hockey, the NHL and NHLPA will deploy several new technology initiatives, including player and puck tracking and an on-bench coaching system, that the league thinks have the potential to affect play on the ice and also present new commercial opportunities. David Lehanski, the NHL’s senior vice president of integrated sales, has played a key role in the development of the new initiatives.
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Puck and player tracking is something that we believe will tremendously enhance and change the way we do business with our broadcasters, directly with our fans from a digital standpoint, and with our teams and our coaches from a strategizing and coaching standpoint.”
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Photo by: MELYNDA PILON / NHL
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On the opportunity around tracking: It’s just going to kick off a tremendous amount of content, new weekly shows that could analyze the data and stats when the system kicks off, so it’s new digital content that we can go ahead and sell. It will change the way that fans participate in our fantasy platforms, and new ways to rank players, and that will create sponsorship opportunities. So the offshoot from player and puck tracking in broadcast, across our digital platforms, all the social conversation it’s going to create, and these are all sponsorable and will create advertising opportunities.
On importance of innovation: That willingness and desire to create new properties and enhancements to the game — that’s what’s driven our event strategy, our media strategy, and almost everything that we’ve done. It’s been the basis for the growth that we’ve had over the last decade or so for sure. When you look at consumption across digital media, it’s much higher for us than many other properties we’re competing with, so we know to keep the growth going and to keep delivering to fans we’ve got to be evolving and enhancing our game from a technology and a digital standpoint.
On working alongside the league’s tech team: I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year plus working with [NHL Chief Technology Officer] Peter DelGiacco and [NHL executive vice president of digital media and strategic planning] Steve McArdle to spearhead some of these initiatives and figure out not only how we make them come to life, but how we can use them as an opportunity to create deep corporate partnerships to not only build the solutions, but promote and market the solutions.
