from Helene Elliott of the LA Times,

An altered but intriguing balance of power brought the NHL back to the altar with ESPN, ESPN+ and Hulu to announce a seven-year TV, streaming and media rights deal that will begin next season. ESPN has turned its focus toward streaming and away from traditional TV and cable, though those components will be part of the deal. The NHL has the generally young, tech-savvy audience ESPN craves. ESPN has a monstrously wide reach.

For the NHL, which is negotiating with other networks to take on portions of its rights that it didn’t sell to ESPN, this is a smart, modern marriage. And a lucrative one, a key element for a league that hasn’t been open to full crowds for a full year and relies on attendance for about half of its revenues. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro declined Wednesday to disclose the value of the deal, and Bettman wouldn’t say if it exceeded the $200 million the NHL has gotten annually from NBC. However, Bettman added, “We think we’ve become more valuable over time.”

Unlike their first, long-ago partnership, the NHL will get a bigger boost from being associated with ESPN than the network gets from rejoining forces with a league that has never found the secret to properly marketing its players or its game. If anybody can figure out the promotional end of things it’s ESPN, all grown up into a skillfully self-promoting, multi-media behemoth that spans generations and interests through being owned by the Walt Disney Company.

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