NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is betting that sports gambling will help increase interest in his sport from both loyal and casual fans alike.
On Monday, the league announced FanDuel as an official sports betting partner and official daily fantasy partner. As part of the multi-year deal, FanDuel will promote free-to-enter single-game fantasy contests for tentpole events and offer daily fantasy customers access to exclusive NHL content and special prizes, such as VIP experiences to events spanning like the NHL Winter Classic and the All-Star Game.
In sports betting, FanDuel will leverage its relationship with the league by using official category designations to appeal to sports betting customers in legal jurisdictions. The NHL currently has two teams in states where sports betting has been legalized: the New Jersey Devils and the Vegas Golden Knights.
At a press event, Bettman said he believes offering fans access to fantasy and betting will help to increase interest in the game overall.
“The early data shows that people who are betting are engaging more with their favorite sports. We want to continue to make sure that our fans have every opportunity to engage with our game virtually any way they want. And to the extent that we can form partnerships or develop new data to make the game more exciting, more intriguing than it already is, are things we’re going to strive for,” he said. “Anything we can do to give our fans a more connected and better experience. Bring them to the game with even more interest. Maybe bring some casual fans who haven’t focused on hockey but will use either daily fantasy sports or sports betting to say ‘Maybe I’m going to take a look and have some fun.’ And once we get you slightly, I think we got you hooked.”
To drop the puck on the new NHL partnership, FanDuel will soon introduce a “Skate to the NHL Winter Classic” contest, where eligible fans can enter daily fantasy contests on FanDuel to win a VIP trip to the 2019 NHL Winter Classic between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Boston Bruins.
FanDuel CEO Matt King said the company is also planning to soon launch a new product for hockey that will help people pick fantasy teams with less research, so that more people can jump in and participate.
“You’re going to see a lot of product innovation around ‘How do we make the game as accessible as possible?’” he said. “We want the average sports fan to be able to pick a credible lineup in less than five minutes. If we can deliver on that we can drive a lot more participation than we have in the past.”
In a separate agreement with the New Jersey Devils, which marks FanDuel’s first agreement in the sports betting category with an NHL team, FanDuel will receive brand exposure during all Devils’ regular-season home games via a prominent, in-ice logo. The partnership will help FanDuel connect with Devils’ fans via a mix of social, digital and in-game activations, enabling it to promote “Live In-Play” betting options now available on the new FanDuel Sportsbook app.
“Since five years ago when Josh Harris and David Blitzer purchased the New Jersey Devils, we’ve been hyper-focused on the fan experience. We’ve made over $20 million in capital improvements to Prudential Center, including the world’s largest scoreboard, and we see this partnership as an extension of that,” said Hugh Weber, president of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which owns the New Jersey Devils and Prudential Center. “We think that if you look at how Europeans take in sports and use sports betting [to engage] with their teams, that this is the future of the league and the future of the experience for Devils’ fans.”
This deal comes one week after the NHL announced another landmark betting deal, with MGM Resorts. That non-exclusive deal gave MGM Resorts access to official league data, including the league-wide tracking system scheduled to be installed by the 2019-20 season.
The key with both of these deals is that it gives fans, particularly younger fans who live on their phones and tend to favor multi-tasking and multi-screen experiences, access to more data and opportunities to engage with sports in their own way and on their own terms.
“Generationally, we’re seeing Gen-Zers coming along and this is how they live and take on sports,” said Weber. “This is not just sitting in front of one media device, they take the world in through all these micro-moments within a game.”
Bettman said that some have been surprised at how quickly the NHL has moved into betting, particularly since it wasn’t among the major U.S. leagues that were outspoken proponents of betting before the U.S. Supreme Court green-lighted state regulation this past spring.
“The moment the Supreme Court ruled that sports betting was going to be legal subject to state regulation, we decided we needed to evolve with the times and we needed to get in front of this and be proactive in terms of developing important partnerships such as this one,” he said. “It’s another connection point, particularly for people who are glued to their phones and laptops.”