Gary Bettman fielded questions on Monday in his annual press conference ahead of the start of the Stanley Cup Final.
One of the topics addressed was the league's plan for advertising on uniforms moving forward.
Bettman said that advertising on helmets, which was an addition this season as a result of the revenue lost due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, will return for next season.
Advertising on jerseys, though, won't happen next season.
Bettman wouldn't rule out adding advertisements to jerseys in the future, though.
"I wouldn't necessarily say it's inevitable," Bettman said. "It's something that makes good sense for us to be considering and looking at. But certainly not for next season. What happens beyond that, I'm not prepared to predict."
Naturally, that caused a lot of stir among fans.
When the idea of advertisements on jerseys comes up, it seems like fans always talk about the concept as a dichotomy -- either it's no advertisements at all, or NASCAR-looking, European-style jerseys with advertisements covering every square inch.
AP
This isn't the only option.
You can look to existing North American hockey leagues though to get an idea of what ads on jerseys might look like if they ever come to the NHL, though. Leagues like the AHL, ECHL, and NWHL have had ads on jerseys for years, and they've always been minimal. As someone who watches a lot of those three leagues, they're not something you notice much during games.
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, for example, has a single shoulder patch. Other AHL teams, like the Syracuse Crunch, have small patch on the chest in addition to a helmet sticker:
WBS PENGUINS
P.O Joseph in a game against the Syracuse Crunch this season.
Teams in the ECHL tend to have a little more, given that those teams tend to get less revenue from the gate and streaming or television deals. The Nailers have more ads than most ECHL teams. They don't have an advertisement on the helmet on either side, but they have chest patches, shoulder patches, and one on the back (that gets hidden anyway if a player tucks his jersey):
ZACK RAWSON / WHEELING NAILERS
The Nailers after a win this season.
NWHL teams have all had the same league sponsor patch (Dunkin') on jerseys for several years now. Some individual teams (like the Whitecaps in the photo below) have an additional patch:
NWHL
The Boston Pride and Minnesota Whitecaps in a game in 2019.
And even in the cases of the NASCAR-looking European jerseys, the jerseys that are available for fans to buy don't actually have advertisements on them.
Personally, I don't think it's that big of a deal if the NHL ends up adding minimal advertisements to jerseys like the examples above.
The salary cap isn't going up until hockey-related revenue surpasses $3.3 billion. If slapping a McDonalds logo on the Penguins' shoulders helps raise the salary cap and ease some of the burden on the team and other teams around the league, I think that's a good thing.
YOUR TURN: Do you think ads on NHL jerseys are inevitable, and is it something that concerns you?
