NEW YORK — NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said Tuesday he could see the league eventually hosting an eSports hockey league competition.
“We envision something that would augment a fan’s affinity to his team because ultimately I could envision a league-wide competition where each club runs a competition to see who will be represented in the equivalent of our championship but for our eSport game,” Bettman said at Leaders’ Sport Business Summit.
“Going back at least a year ago, we’ve been talking to EA about having a game that can replicate hockey in terms of having six players that are playing together against other teams doing this more in terms of building a community and having awareness for the game and doing it in conjunction with our teams,” Bettman said. “And if EA can continue to get some traction in developing a game that would work like that, we’ll be in that business. Not the same way that the single-player, shoot-em-up games, that’s not what we envision.”
Bettman also discussed how while the NHL tested puck and player tracking at the World Cup of Hockey in September, it isn’t ready to come to league play yet.
“We were able to use puck and player tracking, which based on the speed of our game and the amount of action there is, we think will be a way of enhancement in terms of giving fans a second screen experience or enhancing the broadcast experience in terms of the amount of information that can be conveyed to a broadcast audience,” Bettman said.
“The issue that we found is while the technology works, we haven’t been able to scale it yet in 31 different buildings (including expansion Las Vegas) in the course of the regular season, and that’s something that we’re working on with the technology companies.”
