NHL Partners With Paramount Pictures To Promote New "Mission: Impossible" Movie

The NHL has signed a marketing partnership with Paramount Pictures to promote the film "Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol," which debuts on Dec. 21. It is the league's first fully integrated branding partnership with a Hollywood film. Terms of the deal were not known. The league will integrate co-branded 30- and 60-second spots featuring game footage and scenes from the movie during game broadcasts and pre- and postgame shows. The spots will begin airing Friday during NBC's broadcast of the Red Wings-Bruins game. The league will run a "Mission: Impossible" sweepstakes on NHL.com for a chance to win a trip to the '12 Winter Classic in Philadelphia. Select arenas will have branded dasherboards for the film. The spots will be shown on the league's American and Canadian broadcast partners NBC, Versus, TSN, TSN2 and NHL Network. "Our ability to do a North American program sets us apart in this category," said NHL Senior VP/Integrated Sales Keith Wachtel. "The next thing is to integrate promotions like this into the Stanley Cup" (Fred Dreier, SportsBusiness Journal). DAILY VARIETY's Stuart Levine noted the league "has long wanted to team up with a film studio in hopes of tapping into an audience that is similar to the young moviegoer demo." Wachtel said that the NHL "can offer studios and the Hollywood community a viewership that is spread throughout all of North America, not just the U.S." He added that the league "will stay in contact with the studios all season long, especially when the Stanley Cup playoffs arrive in late spring." That is "when the studios are looking for increased promotional heft for their summer blockbuster releases" (VARIETY.com, 11/21).