There is always a moment of confusion when you check your team’s fixture list, potentially looking to attend a match, and you read that the match is taking place in Sweden, or Finland, or Czechia. This has been the case for fans of Toronto Maple Leafs, Minnesota Wild, Colorado Avalanche, and San Jose Sharks, amongst others in the past two years. Arizona Coyotes and Los Angeles Kings fans even had Australia listed as the destination of a match between these two teams, although this was a preseason match.
Hosting regular season matches on an international stage is something the National Football League (NFL) already organizes, while other sports including soccer and tennis are ramping up their ideas around hosting competitions abroad. With the financial incentives involved with playing abroad, along with the increase in exposure from a marketing and sales perspective, is the prospect of playing more NHL regular season matches abroad too tempting to resist?
Finance over fans!
The main factor that has countered the National Hockey League’s decision to play internationally is the ire of fans having one or two regular season matches taken away from them. The financial aspect is not lost on these fans, but from a more traditional perspective, many are of the opinion that competitive regular season matches should remain close to home.
However, despite most fans being based in the US and Canada, there are still fans of NHL located in other parts of the world. Europe has a strong NHL fanbase that also follow NHL odds at Cloudbet, and it is no coincidence that Sweden, Finland, and Czechia have been chosen as destinations to host regular season matches in recent years. These are countries where ice hockey is extremely popular with many fans that follow the NHL, despite the gaping time difference.
For the teams and their owners in particular, the fans are the main pillar of any team, but the reward for visiting new territories is represented in the building of new fan bases and the revenue that brings with it. They will also be aware that the NHL brand as a whole will enjoy a decent boost from representation in other countries, which in turn provides stronger finances for the league.
More international matches on the horizon
The NHL is not the first, and certainly will not be the last sports body to host matches abroad. The NFL have visited London and Germany on a regular basis in recent years while in soccer, the Spanish Football Federation controversially hold a revamped version of the Spanish Supercup in Saudi Arabia in a deal reportedly worth $120 million. With more broadcasting and sponsorship money also being generated on top of ticketing and merchandise revenue, we are likely to see more NHL matches take place outside of the US and Canada, with Munich confirmed for 2024, and London touted as a potential destination for the future.
