On October 8, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ official Twitter account tweeted, “In his last game, Matt Murray had a .933SV percentage,” noting the hockey goaltender’s stat.
“Will his save percentage tonight be OVER or UNDER that against the Jets?” the tweet continued. “Have any hot takes about tonight’s game? Visit betrivers.com to play for real.”
A week later, another tweet invited fans to wager on whether or not forward Jake Guentzel would have a multi-point game against the Colorado Avalanche.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act last May, the NHL has advanced a progressive strategy toward legalized sports gambling. It wanted teams to capitalize on local marketing opportunities rather than wait until the league negotiated large-scale deals, and the Penguins have taken advantage.
“I think we all sit here and watch what fantasy football has done for football and what fantasy sports has done for sports in general, and yeah, I believe this is going to bring more eyeballs to the sport,” said Terry Kalna, the Penguins’ senior vice president of sales and broadcasting. “That’s a good thing for the sport.”
When Gary Bettman became commissioner in 1993, Nevada was the only state with legal sports gambling. In 2012, in a deposition filed in an attempt to block New Jersey’s push for legal sports betting, Bettman said the atmosphere the NHL wanted at its games was “inconsistent with sports betting.” The Supreme Court decision altered his viewpoint.
“A lot of this goes way back with the commissioner and deputy commissioner, Bill Daly, as far as their understanding of this business and having been involved in various legislation over decades,” said Keith Wachtel, the NHL’s executive vice president of global partnerships and chief revenue officer. “We were in a position to understand the potential market.
Post-decision, individual states still needed to legalize it, and New Jersey did, about a month after the court’s decision. That put the New Jersey Devils in the middle of a changing environment and forced the league to react. Fortunately, they had some experience in sports gambling’s mecca.
The NHL’s association with Las Vegas dates back to 1991, when it staged a preseason game between the New York Rangers and the Los Angeles Kings outside of Caesar’s Palace, the league’s first outdoor game. The league has held year-end award ceremonies there for a decade. In 2017, the Vegas Golden Knights, an expansion franchise, played their first game.
“What we also saw was, when we put a team in Las Vegas, the handle on hockey, not just the Golden Knights, but the handle on hockey, in the first year rose 80 percent,” Wachtel told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “It’s the largest growth, percentage-wise, they’ve ever seen from a given year on a sport.”
In March 2018, before the Golden Knights’ first season concluded with a run to the Stanley Cup final, Wynn Las Vegas became an official resort partner. Last October, the Devils partnered with William Hill, one of the world’s biggest bookmakers, in the first such partnership since New Jersey legalized sports betting.
“We’re excited that the leagues are getting behind it,” said Jamie Shea, the head of DraftKings Digital Sportsbook. “I think everybody realized, this is happening. So how do we do it where we work together?”
The NHL has deals with MGM, FanDuel and William Hill. During the league’s research, its executives learned a few things. The bookmakers’ margins are low, around five percent, maybe a shade higher for mobile. There wasn’t a ton of money to be made in the short term, but long-term fan engagement held promise. The league also has not mandated the purchase of its official data.
“They took a very progressive view from Day 1,” said Kip Levin, FanDuel’s president and chief operating officer. “I think they saw this is a reality and with this reality comes opportunity.”
The league’s next unveiling will require the purchase of proprietary data because it can’t be found anywhere else. Using microchips worn by players and embedded in pucks, cameras in the arenas and antennae in the rafters, the NHL plans to release unprecedented puck and player tracking later this season.
Uninfluenced by weather or that night’s starting pitcher, most hockey over/unders are 6 or 6.5 goals. The league began developing the technology for broadcast enhancement—think how a strike zone and pitch velocity are a standard part of every Major League Baseball broadcast—but legalized betting added one more use for information like the speed of a slap shot or that night’s fastest skater.
“Once PASPA got overturned,” Wachtel said, “a light bulb went off.”
