NHL to introduce 'digitally enhanced dasherboards' at start of regular season

The NHL is instituting brand-new “digitally enhanced dasherboards” to start the 2022-23 NHL season, according to this article by ESPN writer Greg Wyshynski.

A new technology for the league that has been in the work for seven years, DEDs will allow broadcasts to erase advertisements on all boards visible to the camera, and put their own advertisements in its place. The plan is also for broadcasts to eventually use this technology to display things like in-game stats or special effects for goal celebrations.

“Every game, every night. This is the new norm,” said NHL chief business officer and executive vice president of global partnerships Keith Wachtel. “We don’t like to call it ‘erase and replace,’ but that was the original terminology. It’s taking something that’s existing, keeping that value, but replacing it with something that’s much better and isn’t static.”

There will be five different zones for broadcasts to sell to advertisers: one in each offensive zone, one in the neutral zone, and one behind each net. Ads will be sold like commercials, and be given 30 second time slots based on the game clock, meaning there will be 120 increments to program overall for each zone.

What this also does is give the opportunity for road teams to remove ads from another team’s board that may clash with their own sponsors, and replace it with something else.

“What this does is allow clubs to sell as many regional game broadcasts as they’re able to in their market,” said Wachtel. “Also, competitors come into everyone else’s market. So, every time the Rangers play in Philadelphia, Chase [Bank] has to see Wells Fargo ads coming back into their very important New York market. You can now avoid that issue, if it’s important to own your own market.”

What might be the most interesting thing about this new technology is how it will impact international markets. DEDs provide the opportunity for markets in other countries to broadcast the games while still advertising to their markets, and not Canadian and American markets. This could create more incentive for international partners to want to broadcast the NHL, and grow the sport worldwide as a result.