NHL’s popularity continues to rise but question remain whether the participation of NHL players in the Olympics will drive it even more. So we asked SBRNet’s President Neil Schwartz to weigh in on what could happen after Italy.
With the start of the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina only days away, we’re sure you’re counting the hours until the first puck drop. It’s going to be big for hockey and for the continued return – building from Paris 2024 and driving toward LA 2028 – of the Olympic Movement.
But how much will it benefit the NHL which is letting its players participate in the Winter Games for the first time since Sochi (Russia) back in 2014. Does Milan-Cortina give the NHL a bump in value.
Reviewing data from around 2014, SBRNet President Neil Schwartz believes those Games did very little for the NHL, moving the needle only slightly when it came to growing its fan base. In fact, the numbers suggest while hockey fandom is up 11% since 2022 overall, this growth has accelerated after a slight decrease around 2014.
Since, 2021, the NHL has experienced a healthy 27% increase in live attendance. That means the League has been pretty healthy without help from the Olympics.
So, is it possible the Games will help hockey, but not the NHL?
Last week we posted our excitement for the Games (with caution about player injury risk), but this week we wanted the input of an industry expert, so we reached out to our old friend Neil who not only provided us with an opinion but with some hot-off-the-presses data.
First, he told us that according to the SBRnet Annual Study of Sports Fandom and Market Intelligence, the NHL continues to trend positively for the trailing 3-year period (2023 to the present) across all four major categories of fan support. Specifically, total fans are up 8%, attendance has increased 26%, overall viewing is +6%, and viewing via streaming has surged 31%.
“These numbers are very much in line with what we are seeing across all team sports fandom here in the U.S,” Schwartz said. “Thanks to the growth of streaming, we’re seeing fan growth across virtually every team sport—especially those with a more robust streaming strategy, which the NHL has clearly embraced.”
In addition to its media strategy, the NHL has taken an aggressive approach to event-based marketing, creating marquee properties such as the annual Winter Classic and the NHL Stadium Series.
Not coincidentally, recent editions of both events have been staged in non-traditional, subtropical markets like Florida. The 2026 version, held January 2nd in Tampa Bay, drew 36,000+ spectators and a television/streaming audience of just under 1 million viewers in the US. And rather than relying on a single tentpole event, the NHL has adopted a multi-event strategy to stimulate interest and drive sustained growth for the sport.
So, while things continue to trend positively for the NHL, shouldn’t NHL players in the Winter Olympics help even more?
“In my view”, Schwartz offered, “the NHL is poised for another potential growth catalyst. With NHL players participating for the first time since 2014, the League should hope Olympic exposure will further elevate the sport’s international profile—particularly North America.”
In Canada, home to seven NHL clubs, the excitement brewing for the Olympic hockey tournament is palpable and the current political ‘issues’ between two longtime friends – the U.S. and Canada – should enhance the interest for that rivalry. Need a quick case study? Think back to the Four Nations tournament the NHL held a year ago (in lieu of an All-Star Game).
That caused us to ask Schwartz to draw on his firm’s expertise – sport business research – and detail how the Olympic Games might help the NHL.
“Typically, when we evaluate a special event of this magnitude, we focus on a variety of data points rather than relying on a single metric like TV viewership,” Schwartz said. “Historically, events such as FIFA World Cups have not only increased fandom, but also driven participation, as well as equipment and apparel sales. That’s likely the true win-win-win scenario the NHL is hoping to achieve with its commitment to Milan-Cortina.”
If true, the benefit for the NHL might not be immediate (it might gain a few older fans) but rather a growth in the engagement of young fans taking up the game. That future fan will hopefully see the NHL’s absolute best showcasing the game for all the world to see.
Norm O’Reilly is the dean of the University of New England’s College of Business and Partner with the T1 Agency. Rick Burton is the David B. Falk Emeritus Professor of Sport Management at Syracuse University and co-host of The NIL Clubhouse on Spotify and Apple. They are co-authors of Business the NHL Way, published by the University of Toronto Press.