The NHL likely to approve helmet advertisements for 2021 season

It looks like advertisements on uniforms are finally on their way to the NHL — but not where you might have expected to see them.

According to Sports Business Journal, the NHL’s Board of Governors is likely to approve a motion for putting advertisements on player helmets for the 2021 season. The BoG has a call scheduled for Thursday.

There has been talk about getting advertisements on NHL uniforms for quite some time. NBA basketball implemented chest patches on their uniforms a couple of years ago, and, of course, it’s been a major part of the soccer uniform for decades. The suggestion of having ads on the team’s sweater itself was met with quite a bit of pushback, both from players and fans.

Given the loss of revenue from the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in the 2019-20 season getting cut short, the 2020 playoffs going without fans, and the 2021 season being chopped in half, there’s more of a desire than ever from NHL owners to find new ways to generate revenue. Allowing major sponsors to put their brand on players is an easy way to make money.

Sports Business Journal further says that the logos will appear on both sides of a player’s helmet, it’ll only be one brand at a time, and teams will have the option of selecting one brand for all home games and one brand for all away games.

It appears as though this is a one-year initiative, but if all goes well and the NHL sees significant revenue from helmet ads, I would expect that we see it implemented permanently. I also wouldn’t rule out jersey ads still being a long-term plan for the league either.

Here’s how it looks in the AHL…

That’s significantly less intrusive than how it looks in European Leagues and in the World Hockey Championships, in which the ad is featured on the front of the helmet…