The NHL's embracing Europe in a smart way

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The logic behind the NHL's Europe-friendly scheduling package

Many American leagues are looking to expand their presence around the world. Sometimes, that's with splashy tours around particular preseason or regular-season games, and those can certainly pay dividends. But there's a a lower-risk approach that can perhaps even pay more dividends over the long term. That would be what the National Hockey League is doing, modifying scheduling of part of their existing NHL season so it's more easily watchable live in certain regions.

For eight years now, the NHL has committed to a package of weekend games broadcast live in prime time in Europe under the NHL Saturday and NHL Sunday labels. They've expanded the numbers of games in this package (currently sponsored by American-based industrial supply company Fastenal) there over the past few years, to a record 46 last season and to 43 this year, with both releases citing that these games will be available live in prime time in more than 30 countries through local media partners. Here's more from the league's release Friday:

The critical thing about this approach is that it doesn't seem negative for the league's primary in-person and television audiences in the U.S. and Canada. And a big part of that is about the weekend scheduling. Playing at European-friendly times during the week would likely be a disaster, as there have been enough problems even with starting playoff games before the end of workdays in Pacific Time.

But the time gap here isn't actually that bad for a weekend. It's six hours between Central European Time and Eastern Time, modified slightly if we're discussing a different European country and/or a different North American time zone. That means these games are generally taking place in the early afternoon Saturday or Sunday locally. (Side note there: the graphic for the first five games above lists them in European style, with the home team listed first.)

And there's plenty of domestic merit to Saturday and Sunday matinee games. Those have long been at least somewhat of a thing in many leagues, including the NHL. In-person or on TV, those can be particular draws for fans with young children who can't stay up late, or for adult fans who have to get up early on weekdays. And there are TV-side benefits here as well; note that the 16 NHL games on ABC all take place on Saturdays (beginning Jan. 3; this wouldn't work in the fall due to their college football commitments), and all but three late-season ones there start in the early afternoon ET. Similarly, four of TNT's seven Sunday games (beginning March 5) are officially in this package, and two others (3:30 and 4:30 p.m. ET starts, so 9:30 and 10:30 p.m. CET) are at least somewhat Europe-friendly.

Thus, this is scheduling that makes sense for the U.S. networks too. The NHL isn't at the top of the priority chart for either ABC parent Disney or TNT parent WBD, but weekend matinees can work for them, especially if not up against college or pro football (as is the case for those Saturday ABC games, which are the only national broadcast TV exposure the NHL currently gets before the playoffs). So the takeaway here is that this particular scheduling follows a league version of "First, do no harm" (to your primary fanbase). (Aside: today I learned that language isn't exactly in the Hippocratic Oath and might even have originated as recently as the 17th century.) That's something that can't be said about some other leagues' international efforts over the years, which have at times been quite alienating for their players and home-country fans: a few of the many examples include the NFL in Brazil (and some NFL international games more broadly), the NBA in China, the bloating of European soccer teams' summer international schedules (part of larger fixture bloat concerns), and whatever CFL 2.0 was trying to do.

To be clear, overseas games and other internationally-focused efforts aren't always specifically bad overall. They can come with some notable benefits in those countries and regions that can more than make up for the negatives. And the NHL plays overseas games too; they'll have two in Sweden in November. But a key element beyond just a game or two a year in a country or region is making your product available there regularly, something these other leagues are also doing. (This February, I interviewed DAZN's Zander Berlinski about the success of NFL Game Pass in Europe on their watch; there are some international notes in there applicable beyond that league.) And if you're able to do so with just some schedule tweaks (which aren't necessarily even completely tweaks in this case, as ABC, ESPN, and TNT likely wanted some of these weekend matinees in the first place), and can build that into a specific repeatable, marketable (and even sponsorable!) package, that seems well worth it.

Other notes:

• Speaking of international, DAZN (also a big international broadcaster of the NHL, including in many of the European countries discussed here) just announced a deal for non-U.S. streaming of a huge amount of additional college sports content. That includes all Big Ten regular-season football games, a selection of Fox's Big 12 and Mountain West football games, and some Big Ten, Big 12, and Big East basketball games. And it adds to other college sports content they already had internationally, including from ESPN around the SEC and ACC (due to a deal struck in August). As discussed above, it seems great for leagues to make their product accessible to international viewers when it doesn't hurt their primary constituencies, and this DAZN deal (which includes that "most games will be exclusive to DAZN and available free-to-view for a limited time on the platform") seems positive there.
• Also on the international front, the New York Jets are making the most of their London game Sunday, announcing three new U.K.-based partnerships ahead of that.
• And apparel company HOMAGE has rolled out a John Candy collection around today's release of the I Like Me documentary (available now on Prime Video). Sadly, there doesn't seem to be anything specifically referencing his ownership of the Toronto Argonauts (read Paul Woods' great books for more!), but there is a cool shirt referencing Joe Montana's Super Bowl XXIII line.

Thanks as always for reading! Send any feedback, tips, etc to andrew@andrewbucholtz.com, or hit me up in our subscriber-only Discord, or on Bluesky or X.