NHL commissioner Gary Bettman touted his sport’s willingness to cooperate with the sports betting industry to determine a fair marketplace and push for appropriate legislation
Speaking at the Leaders Sport Business Summit in New York on Tuesday, Bettman said the NHL was entitled to be compensated for creating the product on which people could bet, but expressed willingness to let market forces determine the commercial relationship.
The NHL is the first North American sports league with three betting partners—MGM Resorts, William Hill, and FanDuel—and Bettman wants to collaborate with operators so that regulatory bills have a greater chance of being approved.
“Unless you have a relationship and are jointly seeking legislation, there’s no shot of legislation getting passed,” he said. “We’ve embraced the industry cooperatively.”
One such avenue for leagues to generate revenue will be through official data, with Bettman reiterating that the NHL’s player-and-puck tracking system will be operational sometime next season.
While much of the tracking data will become publicly available—metrics such as skating speed and distance covered—the best use case for sports books will be if they can access all that information in real time. That will require a licensing deal with the NHL.
Bettman said betting on hockey in Nevada rose 60 percent in the first year the Vegas Golden Knights were in the NHL and another 40 percent during their second season. That suggests there is an appetite for hockey betting products, at least in markets with a local team.
One area where the NHL will not bend is in public dissemination of injury information. While many sports provide specific injury reports in a nod to the betting industry, hockey players and coaches typically hide behind vagaries like reporting just an “upper-body injury.”
“We are well known for our teams not disclosing injuries,” Bettman said, adding: “That’s not something that we’re going to change.”