Hockey business is booming as the NHL bounces back from the pandemic in a big way

NEW YORK (AP) — Arenas are full, the NHL is a fixture on TV screens across North America, highlight-reel goals are talking points on a near-daily basis and “The Pat McAfee Show” even has a segment called “Hockey is Awesome."

Piece it all together, and more eyes are on the puck than ever before with the playoffs beginning this weekend.

Business is booming for the NHL, which has bounced back in a major way from the pandemic. Backstopped by new media rights deals, digital dasher boards and helmet and jersey ads, and buoyed by an overlap of generational stars, ratings are up, attendance set a record and revenue is at an all-time high — an estimated $6.2 billion annually.

“The league is going through a bit of a renaissance,” said Tom Gargiulo, chief marketing officer at Bodyarmor, whose deal to be the league's sports drink is the latest sponsorship agreement inked in recent years. “This sport is moving into the next phase of its evolution and is on a tremendous trajectory.”

Commissioner Gary Bettman says it starts with the game on the ice, which he believes has “never been more exciting, more competitive, more skillful, never been faster.” There are nearly six goals a game on average, and while Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin are still producing, Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews and Nathan MacKinnon are in their prime with another wave of talent led by the likes of Connor Bedard not far behind.

Showcasing star players better than before in the team-first sport has helped, and 22.5 million fans have filled arenas to 97% capacity. League officials are quick to credit ESPN and Turner for buying in, and viewership is up 7% for the most-watched NHL season on cable in 30 years.

“We’ve seen an influx and a growth of female fans, diverse fans,” senior VP of North American business development Kyle McMann said. “They’re finding our product, they’re falling in love with it, they’re starting to watch more.”

Trying new things, including puck and player tracking and cartoon versions of games to draw in younger fans, has set the table for this success. Decades since the experiment of the glowing puck, experts credited the league for attracting and retaining a bigger audience in a crowded sports marketplace.

“They keep doing stuff that’s innovative to keep their audience engaged,” said Lauren Anderson, director of the Warsaw Sports Business Center at the University of Oregon. “The NHL could’ve fallen back on being pretty traditional, and I think they haven’t been afraid to try some things and pivot even when it didn’t work."

Salvatore Galatioto, who runs a sports finance and advisory firm and is a marketing professor at Columbia, said the league has done a good job reaching beyond traditional markets, overcoming some of the unavoidable shortcomings of being expensive to play.

“It’s not rocket science: It’s the number of eyeballs watching your product,” he said. “They have done a really good job of expanding their fanbase, and that’s the key."

Chief NHL Content Officer Steve Mayer has made that his life's work since joining in 2016, coming up with new and different ways to present a more-than-century-old sport, from the 2020 playoff bubble to outdoor games and a reimagined All-Star weekend.

“We’re not here to change the game,” Mayer said. “We’re here to enhance what is out there and to get it in front of more people because we know that if people watch our game, they’re going to fall in love with it.”

Central to the game are the players, and none of this would be possible without a constructive working relationship with the NHL Players' Association, which may be at its most cooperative stage in decades. The league and union found common ground in extending the collective bargaining agreement through 2026, getting back to the Olympics and launching another international competition next year featuring the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Finland.

“It’s a key to moving forward,” union executive director Marty Walsh said. “When I first started, I had a conversation with Gary Bettman, and our teams talked about working together and growing hockey-related revenue, growing the sport. ... We’re all vested in one direction.”

The NHL still has work to do to catch up with the NFL ($18.6 billion in revenue in 2022), NBA ($12 billion) and Major League Baseball ($11.6 billion), but it's not unrealistic to think $10 billion is attainable before the end of the decade.

“We plan on getting there — how and when, obviously, will take some time," chief business officer Keith Wachtel said. "Looking at hockey a bit differently than perhaps it was looked at a decade ago. It’s still the ultimate team sport, but we have such great players and personalities."

One challenge is getting fans who are focused on their own team to watch others. There's evidence that is also starting to turn, with Bedard (Chicago) and Artemi Panarin (New York Rangers) jerseys the highest-selling this season and good ratings even when Canadian teams are on national television in the U.S.

Executive VP Marketing Brian Jennings, who has been at the NHL for 33 years, said there is no shortage of people “knocking on the door" to get in on the boom.

"The constellation of those stars have aligned,” Jennings said. “When we look at our glide path and say, ‘Hey, how bright is the future?’ It’s really bright.”

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

New York Rangers fans celebrate after a goal by center Mika Zibanejad during the second period of an NHL hockey game against the Montreal Canadiens, Sunday, April 7, 2024, at Madison Square Garden in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Florida Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky gives his stick to a fan after the team's NHL hockey game against the Buffalo Sabres, Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Sunrise, Fla. Bobrovsky played in his 700th NHL game. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews (34) celebrates his goal against the Detroit Red Wings during the second period of an NHL hockey game Saturday, April 13, 2024, in Toronto. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)

FILE - The New York Rangers and fans celebrate a shootout victory over the New York Islanders in an NHL hockey game April 13, 2024, in New York. As the NHL playoffs begins this weekend, ushering in the most exciting hockey of the year, business is booming and the league has bounced back in a big way from the pandemic. (AP Photo/John Munson, File)

BEIRUT (AP) — Leaked photographs of the son of Libya’s late dictator Moammar Gadhafi and the tiny underground cell where he has been held for years in Lebanon have raised concerns in the north African nation as Libyan authorities demand improvements.

The photos showed a room without natural light packed with Hannibal Gadhafi’s belongings, a bed and a tiny toilet. “I live in misery,” local Al-Jadeed TV quoted the detainee as saying in a Saturday evening broadcast, adding that he is a political prisoner in a case he has no information about.

Two Lebanese judicial officials confirmed to The Associated Press on Monday that the photographs aired by Al-Jadeed are of Gadhafi and the cell where he has been held for years at police headquarters in Beirut. Gadhafi appeared healthy, with a light beard and glasses.

A person who is usually in contact with Gadhafi, a Libyan citizen, said the photos were taken in recent days. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media outlets.

Gadhafi has been held in Lebanon since 2015 after he was kidnapped from neighboring Syria, where he had been living as a political refugee. He was abducted by Lebanese militants demanding information about the fate of prominent Lebanese Shiite cleric Moussa al-Sadr, who went missing during a trip to Libya in 1978.

The fate of al-Sadr has been a sore point in Lebanon. His family believes he may still be alive in a Libyan prison, though most Lebanese presume al-Sadr, who would be 95 now, is dead.

A Libyan delegation visited Beirut in January to reopen talks with Lebanese officials on the fate of al-Sadr and the release of Gadhafi. The talks were aimed at reactivating a dormant agreement between Lebanon and Libya, struck in 2014, for cooperation in the probe of al-Sadr. The delegation did not return to Beirut as planned.

The leaks by Al-Jadeed came after reports that Gadhafi was receiving special treatment at police headquarters and that he had cosmetic surgeries including hair transplants and teeth improvements. Al-Jadeed quoted him as saying: “Let them take my hair and teeth and give me my freedom.”

Gadhafi went on a hunger strike in June last year and was taken to a hospital after his health deteriorated.

Libya’s Justice Ministry in a statement Sunday said Gadhafi is being deprived of his rights guaranteed by law. It called on Lebanese authorities to improve his living conditions to one that “preserves his dignity," adding that Lebanese authorities should formally inform the ministry of the improvements. It also said Gadhafi deserves to be released.

After he was kidnapped in 2015, Lebanese authorities freed him but then detained him, accusing him of concealing information about al-Sadr’s disappearance.

Al-Sadr was the founder of the Amal group, a Shiite militia that fought in Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war and later became a political party that is currently led by the country’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.

Many of al-Sadr’s followers are convinced that Moammar Gadhafi ordered al-Sadr killed in a dispute over Libyan payments to Lebanese militias. Libya has maintained that the cleric, along with two traveling companions, left Tripoli in 1978 on a flight to Rome.

Human Rights Watch issued a statement in January calling for Gadhafi’s release. The rights group noted that Gadhafi was only 2 years old at the time of al-Sadr’s disappearance and held no senior position in Libya as an adult.

FILE - In this undated file photo made available Sept. 25, 2011, Hannibal Gadhafi, son of ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, watches an elite military unit exercise in Zlitan, Libya. Leaked photographs of Hannibal Gadhafi and the tiny underground cell where he has been held for years in Lebanon have raised concerns. Libyan authorities are demanding that Lebanon improves living conditions for Gadhafi. (AP Photo/Abdel Magid al-Fergany, File)