PWHL games this season are available in Canada on a mix of CBC, Sportsnet and TSNJohn E. Sokolowski/USA TODAY NETWORK
Barely three months into the first season of the PWHL, the “list of success stories is being piled impressively high,” according to Dave Feschuk of the TORONTO STAR. Around the league, sponsors have announced themselves in abundance, while crowds of 13,736 and 8,850 in Detroit and Pittsburgh, respectively, have “prompted discussion about the potential for expansion beyond the league’s inaugural six teams.” PWHL Advisory Board member Stan Kasten said, “I hesitate to say sponsors are flooding in, but they’re flooding in.” He added that such talks of expansion are “premature.” Still, for all the early triumphs, there are “plenty of hurdles yet to be cleared.” Chief among them is securing a media-rights deal that “makes financial sense for the league.” It is "safe to say" the current deals are being seen as “stopgaps on the way to more ambitious horizons.” Kasten: “We have to eventually get into real, money-making profitable broadcast arrangements. ... There's a lot of interest out there.” Kasten said that although last month’s crowd at Scotiabank Arena was record-setting and by extension promising, holding a PWHL game at the home of the Maple Leafs, with all the expenses it entailed, was “not a home run, economically.” But he added that the PWHL “isn’t yet sweating the financials.” Kasten: “Making money, I hope, is somewhere in our future. It hasn't happened yet. But we do definitely believe we're on the track to becoming a successful business some day” (TORONTO STAR, 3/20).
