What you really need to know about NHL deal with MLB Advanced Media

There aren’t many commonalities between baseball and hockey, besides using wooden sticks to score, guys with catching gloves in crouching stances and the legacy of Tom Glavine.

There are many commonalities between Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League, insofar that the two organizations are a disparate collection of franchises who aim to maximize profits and squeeze every bit of potential and potential revenue from every stream they can locate.

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One place where MLB has thrived: In digital media, to the point where MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM, or BAM) has become a gold-standard organization when it comes to online content and streaming. It works with ESPN, WWE and HBO on their digital platforms. And now, thanks to a six-year deal announced this month, it works with the NHL.

“Over the last year, we were in the digital market place deciding what we wanted to do next, looking at all of our options. [NHL COO] John Collins and I and [MLB Commissioner] Rob [Manfred] and [MLBAM President] and CEO Bob [Bowman] and I shared a vision that together two sports could do more, be more and have more possibilities than one,” said NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.

It’s a blockbuster deal: MLBAM is paying $100 million annually for the rights to all the NHL’s digital platforms, and the NHL gets up to 10 percent in equity in MLBAM.

But the deal left a lot of questions for hockey fans. We tried to address some of them with Collins, the NHL’s driving force behind this deal and other innovations.

Here’s our chat with Collins this week. Enjoy!

Q. The most prominent question on a lot of fans’ minds: What does this deal mean for the access we have to NHL footage, and using that footage to create new media in the digital landscape?

MLB is notorious for cracking down on everything from Vines to podcasts; the NHL has been, perhaps, the most hands-off League when it comes to fan-created media like YouTube clips and GIFs. Do you anticipate the same level of access for hockey fans, that same “hands-off” nature to continue in this deal?

COLLINS: We’re two leagues. We both have different regulations, different ways that we approach the business. So a lot of the conversations that we had with Bob were, mostly from a club standpoint, that we can’t rollback. We can’t take things away. We have to build on what’s already there. And most of those conversations were about highlights, and what we do with highlights.

Look, MLB has been possibly more diligent about how to really turn the whole technology and new media space into a viable business than I think almost anybody. But still, it’s not like the NHL is just adopting MLB’s practices on how to do these things.

There are certain things that they’re paying us a rights fee for where they need to be able to run the business. That’s mostly around the subscription products, and then highlights and then advertising and how we generate more traffic and commercial opportunities. What it comes down to is how we make it better for the fans.

That said, we haven’t gotten to that level of conversation yet with MLB because we’re still trying to figure out what products are going to be available when. We haven’t even met with the clubs [about this deal] yet.

But it doesn’t sound like fans making Vines and GIFs from games is a problem for the NHL.

It’s not a problem, but obviously it’s something that we’ve not yet focused on [with MLB]. There’s a lot of work to be done - they’re taking over the NHL Network and getting it up and running in October.

A lot of fans are curious about the plans for the NHL Network. What are the near-term changes for the network, for 2015-16?

We’re going to have new sets, and they’re going to be here in New York [i.e. Secaucus, NJ] rather than in Toronto. It’s a building that was built out for MSNBC but MLB took it over and they’re great facilities. We’re going to have three sets: The set in the NHL Store in Manhattan, where we do NHL Live and make the Player Safety videos; and then two sets out in Secaucus. So we’ll have better sets.

The second thing will be the impact on talent. There’s different talent available in New York than there is in Toronto. There’s going to be more of an opportunity for some of the regional guys that are coming through in the New York area to be part of it. An opportunity to see some old friend like Kathryn Tappen, who’s with NBC now. We used her last year on NHL Network a little, but she couldn’t really commute between New York and Toronto. There’s also interest from some of the other NBC guys and we’d love to have them.

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