Compared to their European counterparts in the English Premier League, La Liga and other overseas organizations, U.S. professional sports leagues are still in the preliminary stages of their eSports involvement. The NHL, for example, is still on the outside looking in.
One source recently told Elliotte Friedman, who is an NHL Insider at Sportsnet, that the league’s entry into the space and the conversation around it is still “a sperm cell.”
At a December Board of Governors’ meeting, Friedman raised the question of the NHL examining the possibility of getting into eSports, something along the lines of what transpired with the Philadelphia 76ers last September where the franchise bought two teams and merged them into one under Team Dignitas.
“You should ask,” Ted Leonsis, Chief Executive Officer of Monumental Sports and Entertainment, which owns and operates the Washington Capitals, told Friedman.
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Leonsis entered the eSports arena last Fall as part of a new ownership group with Magic Johnson and Peter Guber that bought a controlling interest in Team Liquid. And while there was headway made in 2016 with other NBA owners and players diving in along with the occasional NFL player, like Los Angeles Rams lineman Rodger Saffold, the NHL still didn’t see any significant involvement.
BAMTech, which is a spinoff of Major League Baseball Advanced Media and the streaming technology provider for the NHL along with other clients, just struck a $300 million streaming rights deal with gaming publisher Riot Games last month. Perhaps there’s the potential for some overlap there with the NHL, but at this point it’s just pure speculation.
Still, one eSports team owner, Rick Fox of Echo Fox, has suggested that the NHL might want to be concerned that gaming could become bigger than a U.S. professional sports league. The former Los Angeles Lakers forward, who purchased a League of Legends team just over a year ago and renamed it Echo Fox, told TMZ Sports in 2016 that, in his eyes, eSports is currently “fifth” now behind the four major U.S. professional sports leagues.
“Two years (eSports) will be on par with the NHL,” he said.