NEW YORK — NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said Tuesday he could see the league eventually hosting an eSports hockey league competition.
“We envision something that would augment a fan’s affinity to his team because ultimately I could envision a league-wide competition where each club runs a competition to see who will be represented in the equivalent of our championship but for our eSport game,” Bettman said at Leaders’ Sport Business Summit.
Bettman’s vision appears similar to that of the NBA, which announced last month that it would partner with Take-Two Interactive Software to become the first U.S. professional sports league to operate an official eSports league called the NBA 2K eLeague. The NBA is set to have its basketball teams run NBA 2K eLeague teams starting in 2018.
The Washington Capitals’ Ted Leonsis and Boston Bruins’ Jeremy Jacobs are NHL owners who have bought pieces of eSports franchises. But the NHL has not gotten involved in eSports as much as other sports leagues thus far and continues to investigate the situation.
“Going back at least a year ago, we’ve been talking to EA about having a game that can replicate hockey in terms of having six players that are playing together against other teams doing this more in terms of building a community and having awareness for the game and doing it in conjunction with our teams,” Bettman said. “And if EA can continue to get some traction in developing a game that would work like that, we’ll be in that business. Not the same way that the single-player, shoot-em-up games, that’s not what we envision.”
EA’s NHL 17 currently features EA Sports Hockey League mode.
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Bettman also discussed how while the NHL tested puck and player tracking at the World Cup of Hockey in September, it isn’t ready to come to league play yet.
“We were able to use puck and player tracking, which based on the speed of our game and the amount of action there is, we think will be a way of enhancement in terms of giving fans a second screen experience or enhancing the broadcast experience in terms of the amount of information that can be conveyed to a broadcast audience,” Bettman said.
“The issue that we found is while the technology works, we haven’t been able to scale it yet in 31 different buildings (including expansion Las Vegas) in the course of the regular season, and that’s something that we’re working on with the technology companies.”