The NHL unveiled plans for its first venture into esports Friday with the announcement of the 2018 NHL Gaming World Championship tournament.
The league is teaming up with EA Sports to deliver a bracket-style one-on-one tournament for registered online players in the U.S., Canada and Europe starting March 24. After four consecutive weekends, a champion will be crowned June 19 with a prize pool of $100,000 and an invitation to appear at the NHL Awards in Las Vegas.
The league hopes venturing into the esports platform will help grow its fan base and allow the NHL to connect with current fans in a different way.
"This is really at its embryonic stage," NHL executive vice president and chief revenue officer Keith Wachtel said (via ESPN). "This is the most basic way for our fans to play. We're also going to explore in the future the opportunity, and we're going to test this with some of the guys at the regional tournaments and the final, maybe a two-versus-two or a three-versus-three."
The venture is a collaboration with three of the league's global broadcast partners — NBC Sports, Sportsnet in Canada and Viasat in Sweden — where the networks will each host a regional final and produce content around the various stages of the championship.
The tournament will go through single-elimination online qualifier rounds, which includes tournaments for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles.The PS4 will become the exclusive console for the regional final and championship round.
The top two gamers from each regional final will advance to Las Vegas for the final, which will be a round-robin-style tournament. The winner and runner-up from the round robin will compete in a best-of-three final round and then the 2018 NHL Gaming world champion will be named.
Gamers have played the EA Sports Hockey League online for several years, but this is the first move into the esports market for the NHL. Former COO of the Arizona Coyotes Ari Segal is now the COO of the Esports Immortals team, and is hopeful this will be a positive move for the league.
"I'm excited that they're trying out-of-the-box methods to reach a young audience that might not otherwise be familiar with or enthusiastic about NHL content," Segal told ESPN. "On the other hand, in order to succeed in this market, you have to be really, really precise about who your target is."
