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Popularity

The NHL is considered one of the four major professional sports leagues in North America, along with Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and the National Basketball Association. The league is very prominent in Canada, where it is the most popular of these four leagues. Overall, hockey has the smallest total fan base of the four leagues and receives the smallest annual revenue; the league earns the least from the television rights sale and has the lowest sponsorship.

The NHL had been the sport holding the most affluent fan base of the top four, but it slid behind the MLB and leveled off with the NFL in recent years. A study done by the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2004, found that NHL fans in the United States were the most educated of the four major leagues. Further, it noted that season-ticket sales were more prominent in the NHL than the other three because of the financial ability of the NHL fan to purchase them. The NHL has the most white-based audience among the four. According to Reuters, in 2010, the largest demographic of NHL fans was males aged 18–34. The NHL estimates that half of its fan base roots for teams in outside markets. So, beginning in 2008, the NHL started to shift toward using digital technology to market to fans to capitalize on this.

The debut of the Winter Classic, an outdoor regular season NHL game held on New Year's Day in 2008, was a significant success for the league. The game has since become an annual staple of the NHL schedule. Coverage of "Hockey Day in America," later rebranded as Hockey Weekend Across America with TNT, allowed for multiple games to be broadcast in the United States on the national rights holder. These improvements led NBC and the cable channel Versus to sign a 10-year broadcast deal, paying US$200 million per year for both American cable and broadcast rights; the deal will lead to further increases in television coverage on the NBC channels.

This television contract has boosted viewership metrics for the NHL. The 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs saw the largest audience in the sport's history "after a regular season that saw record-breaking business success, propelled largely by the NHL's strategy of engaging fans through big events and robust digital offerings." This success has resulted in a 66 percent rise in NHL advertising and sponsorship revenue. Merchandise sales were up 22 percent, and the number of unique visitors on the NHL.com website was up 17 percent during the playoffs after rising 29 percent in the regular season.