Hockey Romance, Stadium Takeovers and the Squeezed Middle

On stage: Heidi Browning, senior EVP and chief digital officer, NHL · Rachel Epstein, chief marketing officer, NWSL · Hillary Mandel, EVP, IMG · Heidi Noland, EVP of brand and creative, UFC · Moderator: Abe Madkour, Sports Business Journal

Pop culture is a fan funnel

Browning said hockey is having a moment, coming off a season of records. What surprised her most was where the new interest came from.

Nobody had a hockey romance on their bingo card, she said. But "Heated Rivalry," which premiered on Crave and HBO Max last November, and Prime Video's "Off Campus" pushed the NHL into pop culture feeds it had never reached.

The league wanted to know whether the bump would last. Browning said the NHL worked with Nielsen to compare viewers' habits before and after the shows. It found 1.8 million people who watched the NHL after watching either show, having never watched it before.

"So now our mission is how do we continue to welcome these new fans who are curious about our game, have a passion for it, and help them become long-term fans," she said.

Asked whether the league's female fan base is up about 30%, Browning said yes, and credited more than the shows. She called pop culture "the fuel, the fire underneath." The Olympics, with heavy female and young viewership and plenty of athlete storytelling, were a big contributor too, she said.

Events are the front door

Every panelist talked about events as the way in. Browning said the NHL has staged outdoor games for about 20 years and now puts rinks in baseball and football stadiums, with live music around them. That's a sampling opportunity, she said, a way to pull first-time fans into the funnel.

Epstein pointed to Gotham FC's July match against the Washington Spirit at Citi Field, which drew more than 42,000 fans. About 80% of the ticket buyers were new to the club, she said.

For Noland, the first half of UFC's year centered on its June card at the White House, which UFC says was the biggest exclusive live event in Paramount+ history. Events also give fans access to athletes and give partners useful data, another panelist added, so fans get an experience instead of a sales pitch.

Mandel added the media angle. Regular seasons are long, she said, and tentpole events inside them prop the season up and give media partners another way to bring sponsors in. But the events are expensive, the panel noted, and some are loss leaders.

Women want a different way in

Madkour passed along an audience question citing SBJ reporting that female fans are the most under-monetized fan base in sports. Epstein, who oversaw espnW during her years at ESPN, said the lesson from back then still holds.

"We used to sort of say stories over stats," she said. Women fans are passionate about the game, she said, but their way in may be different, and for young women it is often through the players. Noland said UFC sees female engagement jump whenever women fighters are on the card.

The squeeze is in the middle

Mandel said the media landscape has never been more complicated. IMG starts work on a client's next media deal the day after it signs the current one, she said.

There are economic headwinds across digital and traditional media, she said, but "live sports, premium live sports, is still the heartbeat. It is the revenue driver, it's the subscription driver." Premium rights will keep rising because buyers have to have them. There aren't new dollars, though, only redistributed ones.

"So the squeeze is happening in the middle," Mandel said. Properties seen as nice to have will need to get creative about proving their value, whether through sponsorship, digital growth or taking on their own production.

Asked later what the industry talks about too much, she picked rights fees. Too much attention goes to the number, she said, as if it were the only measure of success.

World Cups and global habits

An audience member said MLS hadn't capitalized on the men's World Cup and asked how the NWSL will handle the 2027 Women's World Cup. Epstein said the work starts well before the tournament, so fans know the league's stars before they leave to play for their countries.

A bump isn't enough, she said: "the whole ecosystem has to connect those new fans to the sport of soccer, to the culture of soccer, to the passionate communities that our clubs have built." She sees a near-term window in Brazil next year and a five-year window through the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and the 2031 Women's World Cup in the U.S.

On going global, Browning said about 30% of NHL players come from outside North America. The league now schedules Monday afternoon games that air in prime time in Germany, building a weekly habit there, and she said the clubs haven't taken a business hit.

Noland said most of UFC's fans are international while most of its revenue is in the U.S., a gap it's closing with more than a dozen international events this year, including a November return to Doha. Its sponsors are moving the same direction: Meta and IBM are building into the fan experience, from Meta AI features to an IBM insights engine that serves fight data in real time. "It's not about just slapping on a logo," she said.

The Coach's Board take

Every growth story on this stage started with a new front door: a TV romance, a stadium takeover, a first match at Citi Field. Youth sports runs on the same math at a smaller scale. A family's first game, clinic or tournament is the funnel, and what happens after it decides whether they stay.