NHL Hands Extensive Ad Sales Responsibilities Over To NBCU

NBC Sports Group has struck a wide-ranging advertising deal with the National Hockey League that gives the Comcast-owned network oversight of the teams’ national sales.

The agreement builds on April’s deal that extends media rights for league games for 10 more years. Unlike the programming rights contract, which has been estimated to be worth about $2 billion, the new ad sales deal is limited to the next five years. All NHL games airing across NBC, Versus as well as online properties NBCSports.com, the NHL Network, NHL mobile, and all official NHL digital sites, including NHL.com -- will be sold by the NBC Sports Group Sales Department. The deal also includes shifting an unspecified amount of NHL media sales staffers over to NBC. In addition to offering more control and greater opportunities for cross-platform sales, NBC will also get an instant traffic boost when exhibition games start up in September and the regular play begins the month after. Specifically, all traffic generated by official NHL digital sites, including NHL.com, will now be attributed to NBC Sports Digital. On top of the cross-platform opportunities, the addition of NHL ad sales duties can be expected to strengthen NBCU’s hand as it works to expand its reach to marketers for its other sports broadcasting, including The Golf Channel, upcoming Sunday Night Football games, the Super Bowl and the Olympics (which the network has through 2020), not to mention its 11 regional sports networks.