Ask top executives at the NHL where the league has the upper hand on its rivals, and they'll likely point to convergence, the phenomenon that refers to televisions operating more like computers and vice versa. The NHL is best positioned to take advantage of emerging technologies, they say, because its fan base is young, educated and knows its way around a mouse pad.
Entrusted with leading the NHL down that interactive path is an executive who embodies all those qualities — 32-year-old Doug Perlman.
Promoted twice in the last year as the league fiddled with an organizational model designed for the digital age, Perlman was recently named senior vice president of tele- vision and media ventures at the NHL. He oversees all the league's television and new media business operations, and now its Internet division, too, after a series of changes earlier this month.
CBS Sports veteran Keith Ritter, 13 years his senior, now will report to Perlman in his capacity as president of NHL Interactive Cyber Enterprises, the league's Internet unit. (He'll also report to league COO Jon Litner in other capacities.)
Perlman finds himself with more responsibility than anyone else his age at a major league sport and perhaps in the entire sports world.
"Doug has emerged as one of the key players in helping us develop our digital strategy," said Litner, 37, Perlman's boss. "He's proven to be a very strong strategic thinker with a keen business acumen. Those factors make him the right guy to lead the charge."
Perlman's job is a balancing act between managing the league's most important revenue stream, television; an emerging revenue source, nhl.com; and other potential sources that are barely in the experimental phase.
When not laying the groundwork to negotiate the league's new Canadian TV deal, which expires after next season, Perlman spends his time on projects such as a live Webcast of the All-Star skills competition, which let Internet users view the events through a 360-degree camera.
"There's not any significant revenues today," said Perlman of the league's interactive forays, "but we learn from every experience. If there are businesses out there saying 'I don't want to get involved. I'll wait until there's a viable business,' I think they're making a terrible mistake."
When digital cable subscribers tuned into the ESPN telecast of the NHL All-Star skills competition Feb. 3, they found more than just hockey players shooting at targets. Icons flashed on their screens that, when zapped with a remote control, called up bios on each player, or information from advertisers, or even allowed viewers to order merchandise from the NHL online store.
"If you just looked at it from a pure dollars-and-cents perspective, the revenue generated didn't justify the time we spent to pull this deal together," Perlman said. "But this is the first time this kind of thing was carried out, and that's going to benefit us."
The All-Star Game the next day marked the national debut of Trakus, a system to measure the speed of athletes. Down the road, it may be far-out concepts such as having a cell phone ring and show a tiny video replay every time a team scores a goal.
If new age titles were part of the NHL's culture, Perlman would probably be called the "convergence coordinator." His hand is in every facet of the league's media business, and his mandate is to drive each to the cutting edge.
"I would call the NHL an early adopter," said Bryan Burns, vice president of strategic business planning and development at ESPN. "In many cases, leagues want, want, want, but will they take the time to roll up their sleeves and say 'How can we make this happen?'
"That's one of the reasons I like Doug a lot. He understands what the league would like to accomplish, but also understands the limitations of the technology, so he has realistic views about what we can and can't do."
Far more of a student of new technology than a natural tech geek, Perlman joined NHL Enterprises LP as a staff attorney when he was just 26, after two years with leading sports law firm Proskauer Rose.
His background wasn't in hockey — he played varsity baseball in high school and followed college basketball religiously as an undergraduate at Duke — but at a league that was actively building its staff and asking its employees to do a little bit of everything, Perlman was a perfect fit. When he helped negotiate the deal with IBM to create the league's in-house Web business in 1996, he took it upon himself to learn everything he could about the Internet. When putting together an exclusive satellite distribution deal with DirecTV, Perlman became an expert on satellite and digital television. Along the way, he slowly was handed less legal work and more responsibility for charting the overall strategic direction of the league.
Adept at discussing technology, or business concepts, or legalese, or, for that matter, last night's football game, Perlman is to the NHL what C-3P0 was to the Jedi Alliance — a skilled translator who can communicate with people from disparate worlds and bring their ideas together.
The youngest among a long list of Commissioner Gary Bettman's thirty-something deputies (NHL Enterprises President Ed Horne and the league's chief legal officer, Bill Daly, are also under 40), in some ways Perlman is the epitome of the young, hungry executives Bettman has groomed.
But his style is not as guarded as most of his colleagues. Self-effacing and genuine, he sells the league not by pointing to accomplishments but with his boyish enthusiasm about what lies ahead.
"Quite frankly, I don't think we've done a terrific job of conveying to consumers what our players are like," he said. "But technology can get people closer to our teams and our players. Whether it's through covering press conferences [on the Web] that broadcasters can't, or cameras in the locker room or on the bench — our fans are going to eat this stuff up."
Traveling the country attending Internet conferences and meeting with start-up technology firms is now a regular part of Perlman's schedule.
Keeping up with the techno-jargon makes Perlman popular in NHL circles.
He spoke before a packed room of team presidents and chief marketing officers last summer at league meetings in Boca Raton, Fla., walking them through the basics, such as the definition of "convergence" and "broadband." He then threw in a few more advanced terms, like "walled garden," which refers to exclusive content that a broadband service provider offers its subscribers.
Perlman's job is not just to be a champion of innovation. He also must guard the traditional, and the hard cash that the bread-and-butter revenue streams bring to the league. After all, "television" is part of his title.
"If someone can get NHL highlights on their cell phones or personal digital assistants, we've got to be cognizant of any impact that could have on ticket revenues or national or local rights deals," Perlman said. "One thing we constantly say in the office is 'Just because something can be doesn't mean it should be.' "
Walking that fine line requires looking at things from the perspective of the league's core adult audience, as well as from the vantage point of teens and kids who will be the fans of tomorrow.
Even as the league's resident young turk, Perlman recognizes that he is not part of the audience that many of the new media applications target.
"You have to be careful not to assume that you're the typical consumer," he said. "Even those of us in our 30s are in a generation long forgotten. People growing up today are much more used to multitasking and interactivity. You have to analyze things through the eyes of a 15-year-old."
He tells the story of going to his wife's parents' house last Christmas and trying to play a video game with her teen-age brother.
After a few minutes of trying to figure out what all the buttons meant, he threw the console down in frustration. He then looked up and realized that his young brother-in-law was not only playing the game masterfully but also had another television on and was talking on a speaker phone and listening to a stereo.
"And I couldn't even play the stupid game," Perlman said.
It comes down to recognizing the difference between what's being called "lean back" or "lean forward" programming. People who grew up before the advent of the Internet may never warm up to the interactive viewing experience, but the younger generation is ready and waiting.
"It's just like it drives some older people crazy when someone uses a remote control," Perlman said.
