Q&A: New Media at the National Hockey League - January 2004  

Keith Ritter

In the final article in a series of questions and answers with heads of the new media/interactive divisions of major US sports properties, Rachael Church, editor of Sport and Technology, spoke to Keith Ritter, president of NHL Interactive Cyber Enterprises (NHL ICE).

Please describe your role and responsibilities at NHL ICE

"My responsibility is to run this digital division of the National Hockey League and we are responsible among other things for running NHL.com, its league sites and an aggregation of other hockey sites around the world, including the Hockey Canada site. We also have an Italian language site and a German language site. We also look after the league's wireless programme and interactive television. We're involved in the syndication of a lot of the league's content, both data and video and we also run the league's direct sales businesses that include online and catalogue."

What prompted the NHL to form an interactive division?

"ICE began as a joint venture with IBM who at the time was the league's technology partner. We didn't know a lot about technology then although we knew a lot about hockey. That joint venture worked very well for a number of years and then around four years ago we bought ourselves out of that deal and now we are a wholly-owned division of the league."

Are technology and new media central to the NHL?

"The commissioner of the NHL has a saying that has become a mantra for all of us and that is 'everything is connected to everything else'. I can't think of an expression that better typifies what the internet is all about. Part of the reason why we wanted to go it alone in the technology space wasn't because IBM wasn't a good partner because they were, it was because there are certain agendas in this organisation like in all organisations that are ours and ours alone. For example when we are working with our corporate marketing people to sell sponsorships on the internet and leverage corporate partners in the digital space or when we are working with our television group on how we distribute highlights. It became easier to do all this ourselves. We talk all the time to our counterparts in other pieces of the league and everything does run through one or more of our digital businesses and vice versa."

How much control do you have over the individual club sites?

"The league website is a mile wide and an inch deep. Each of our 30 clubs is responsible for running its own website. The model for us is very much along the lines of American television where ABC and Peter Jennings may do the world news and cover the broad, global issues well but won't cover what's going on in Greenville, South Carolina. But ABC will also have an affiliate station that runs news that only talks about Greenville, South Carolina. That's like the model we have - the league site will talk about what's going on across the league but the Rangers site will talk about its own club. This model has worked out very well for everybody. The club sites very much typify the club's own personality. Other than giving them some guidelines in terms of basic content, we let them do their own thing. This differs to say baseball where the MLB does all the team sites based on a single template."

What do you do online to cater for fans outside the US?

"We are a global game with a third of fans coming from outside North America. There's tremendous interest in places like Sweden, Finland, Russia, the Czech Republic, Germany and Great Britain. We have players from all those countries playing in our league. In some cases English is a perfectly acceptable language and in other cases, it is more acceptable to be in another language. We didn't just want to translate our site though into other languages, it was important for us to work with someone who is local and understood how that particular culture approaches our game. We're talking about producing Czech and Russian language websites at the moment."

What are the main revenue streams for NHL.com?

"These fall in between commerce (direct sales), sponsorship and business to business applications. Direct sales and sponsorship are significantly more than either paid content, which is another revenue stream for us, or business to business but subscription stuff is growing every year."

Are you therefore witnessing a willingness from fans to pay for content?

"We try and walk a fine line. We're not about placing barriers between our game and our fans. For example, that's why our radio product per game is free. On the other hand though when we are doing something we think is different, for example searchable, sortable, nightly highlights, where you can build a list of your fantasy hockey team and with one click go in and watch them the next morning with just the highlights of the guys you want to see, that's really above the basic stuff, we have to invest a lot of technology and we don't feel it is unreasonable to ask the fans to help us share that a little bit. Obviously we are business people and as the willingness from sports fans to pay for some of this content increases we want to walk that line of bringing new fans to the game while entertaining our current ones, while running a business. And we do run a good business here."

Do fans pay for fantasy games on NHL.com?

"We have several different varieties of fantasy games and don't charge for all of them. There's a basic free game to entice people into the concept and it's very simple. We like the model where people can come in and play for free but if they want to grow their team and play more competitively then you do end up paying for it. It's recreation. I don't know where along the line that we came up with the notion that all online entertainment should be free. Television itself in the US has moved primarily from a free-to-air product to a pay product on cable. And there's no reason why it won't be similar on the web, we are already seeing it migrating into a pay product. There are plenty of opportunities to play for free in an ad-supported model and then opportunities to play more in depth for a small charge. I can't see a problem with that."

Is wireless technology important to the NHL?

"Yes and we have a three-tiered strategy on the wireless side. We have a basic widespread WAP version of NHL.com which has game alerts and scores and that sort of thing. We also have a middle-level layer which is SMS stuff where people can vote for MVPs and play trivia games for prizes etc. We also have downloadable games for Java-based phones and we are going to be announcing soon a high-end subscription product for wireless."

Finally, which technology will have the biggest impact on your sport in your opinion over the next few years?

"I can see two technologies having a big impact. One is the continued growth of broadband - that will have a huge affect because from our perspective, 75% of people who come to NHL.com do so via broadband connections and that has dramatically changed how we approach our content offerings. We are far less concerned with page weight than we are with making sure we offer something that is compelling. Secondly will be the growth of high definition television. We have a deal somewhere between the local cable guys and Mark Cuban's HD-Net here in the US where something like a third of our games will be broadcast in HD this season. All sports benefit because of the clearer picture but in our case it is also the different aspect ratio. A lot of the action takes place away from the pucker and with the broader aspect you will be able to see that happening on television like you can in the stadium. That will be a very big influence for us."

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