NHL Looking to Expand Into Europe

Could the NHL be looking to expand into Europe?

Nov 16, 2023; Stockholm, SWEDEN; General view of the scoreboard during a Global Series NHL hockey game between the Detroit Red Wings and the Ottawa Senators at Avicii Arena. Mandatory Credit: Per Haljestam-Imagn Images / Per Haljestam-Imagn Images

The topic of NHL expansion has been a hot button topic for the past decade. The team has added two franchises to the league, the Vegas Golden Knights and the Seattle Kraken, since 2017.

Still, the NHL has given plenty of impression that they are hoping to expand even more over the coming years. With 32 teams currently in the league, it feels like a certainty that there will be 34 or even 36 organizations eventually.

According to a recent report from CNBC's Jake Piazza, that expansion could move into Europe. He points out that the groundwork has already been laid in multiple ways. The league has been playing a few games annually in European cities as part of their NHL Global Series. When they play there, the advertisements on the helmets and jerseys have been switched to European sectors of their American counterparts, like when the New Jersey Devils swapped their usual Prudential sponsorship patch for their international holding company, PGIM.

Piazza also spoke with Irwin Kirshner, a media rights expert with experience around multiple sports leagues expanding, about what this could mean for the NHL. Kirshner believes that the potential for a team in Europe would create more bargaining leverage for the league due to more advertising ability and range.

“The more eyeballs you have, the more valuable the signal can be,” Kishner said. “And it’s more that you can drive on sponsorship, the more that you can pay for players, the richer the league becomes.”

Of course, an expansion franchise in Europe would present a litany of challenges. The first would be travel. With the NHL Global Series, teams arrive several days before their games and stay for roughly a week. The teams will play a pair of games and take part in multiple league and community building activities. With a full-time team in the mix, the logistics of traveling would present a huge obstacle.

Secondly, while the optimistic part of expanding into Europe suggests that this will also expand the player pool in the NHL, there is a chance it backfires. The NHL has already seen what happens when an organization within the United States becomes a maligned location for players (see the Atlanta Thrashers, Hartford Whalers, and Arizona Coyotes as some recent examples). The wrong location could be a death sentence for an NHL organization, and the stakes would be even higher with the potential first European team.

It still seems a ways off, but the subject is gaining steam around the league. The NHL wants to expand, and it might become inevitable that the league moves into Europe. It's just a matter of time.

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