The Graeme Roustan Show: Gary Bettman In 2025

The Hockey News' Money and Power 2025 hockey business annual is available at THN.com/free, featuring the annual 100 people of power and influence list.

W. Graeme Roustan, owner and publisher of The Hockey News, sat down with special guests for peer-to-peer conversations also featured in the issue, including NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

Here's their full conversation in The Graeme Roustan Show:

Read along with an excerpt from their discussion:

W. GRAEME ROUSTAN: What a year it’s been for the NHL. Really, 2024 has been an amazing year. There’s so many great storylines, but is there one thing that really stuck out for you?

GARY BETTMAN: There’s never one thing, but if you look for the starting point, it’s the game and the players. People, fans, former players, coaches and media have said last season may have been the best season in the history of our game. It was an exciting, competitive, fun season. Player skill was on display like never before. Come-from-behind victories, I think if they didn’t set a record, it was close to setting a record. Everything we do to promote, grow and sell the game, starts with the game. So, that’s the starting point as to why last season was good.

WGR: You and I have been around for a long time, and it used to be that if the big markets were there, they got the audience. If the small markets were there, you didn’t get the audience. But it’s the opposite today. What’s shifted in the audience, that now the audience comes no matter who the teams are in there?

GB: Well, first of all, it’s the game. It’s entertaining. It’s exciting. It’s fast. It’s skillful and it’s unpredictable. Secondly, it’s the fact that we’re more widely distributed and getting better coverage, both in Canada and the U.S., than we ever did before. But we would be kidding ourselves if we said, “Well, the ratings wouldn’t be even better if you had big markets.” That’s just the fact of life. But that’s not, at least from my standpoint, what drives us. What drives me is making sure the game’s as good as possible, and then everything will flow from there. Again, no matter where you live, who you’re a fan of, I want you to feel connected to the game and that your emotional tie to your team is being satisfied. Even if you don’t win the Cup, knowing that your team was in the competition.

WGR: You became commissioner and I think one of your early actions was to create parity in the league and try to work towards it.

GB: It was actually a desire to have the best competitive balance, which our system gives us. Between the salary cap and the revenue sharing, all of our teams can afford to compete. And that wasn’t always the case. If you go back to the turn of the century, there were teams with $20-million payrolls, and there were teams with $85-million payrolls. The only way the lower-payroll teams could compete, and I had a number of coaches describe this to me, was, “We clutch. We grab. We hook and hold. Neutralize skill for 50 minutes, and then we try to steal the game.” That’s how we wound up in the ‘Dead Puck Era,’ as it was called. One of the reasons we were engaged so intensely in trying to get a new economic system was we knew it was making the game sick, and it had to be fixed.

WGR: And, arguably, it is fixed. It’s never been better.

GB: We’ve had 20 years of living under this system, and we see the results. What we did with Amazon Prime Video’s Faceoff, going behind the scenes, getting a good look at players, the Quest for the Stanley Cup, all of the things that we’re doing to connect fans in more ways to our players in the game, help sell the game because the game and the players are that good.

WGR: The NHL is becoming more and more like a media company with all the programming that you’re putting out and all the content.

GB: I talked about the importance of the game, and everything starts with that. So, what I’m about to say isn’t to contradict that or even lessen the importance of that. We are an entertainment and media company. It revolves around what we believe is the greatest sport, with the greatest athletes and the most competitive competition. But in the final analysis, it’s everything we do around the game that makes the game so vibrant and brings it to as many people as we do.

"We are an entertainment and media company." - Gary Bettman

WGR: There’s talk that next year the cap number is going to go over $100 million.

GB: I think that’s a little bit of speculation that popped up on a slow news day. The fact is, the numbers were off. The cap is going to go up, but we have a formula. The formula wouldn’t take us anywhere near that yet. And frankly, if we’re going to adjust the cap, it requires an agreement between the league and the Players’ Association. We haven’t even had those discussions. I think the cart got in front of the horse, as they say. We have one more year in our current collective bargaining agreement. Everything relative to how you compute the cap and all that, I suppose, will be something that we discuss.

WGR: How important is it to have new media partners always coming in and refreshing what you’re currently doing?

GB: Well, some of our existing partners are pretty darn good. Rogers has been great. The Walt Disney Company and ESPN are great. Warner Brothers Discovery, Turner is great. I don’t think you change up for the sake of changing up. I’m also a very strong believer in relationships. As long as you’re in a relationship that’s performing for both parties to the relationship, as long as you think your value is being recognized, you don’t make a change just for the sake of making a change.

Having said that, we find ourselves in evolutionary times in terms of media distribution. We’re adjusting in terms of the regional sports channels, particularly in the United States. And we’re looking at new models. In terms of national distribution, what Rogers decided to do, with our approval, with Amazon Prime Video is just another way of looking at what may be coming next in terms of how fans will consume the game. What people tend to forget, and it doesn’t really ever get focused on, when we made that deal 11 or 12 years ago, it also included digital streaming rights. Nobody was doing that then, and we tried to get in front.

We’ve done a good job in getting ahead on technological advances, whether or not it was being an early streamer, in conjunction with what we do linear, whether it’s digitally enhanced dasher boards or puck- and player-tracking. We believe that technology is just another way for fans to get what they want out of the game, to connect with the game on their terms, which is particularly important for young people, millennials, Gen Zs and now Gen As. You’ve got to be flexible, and you’ve got to be forward-looking to make sure you're doing what you need to do to satisfy your fans.

WGR: When you came in in ’93, there were a lot of franchises in trouble. I don’t know how many…

GB: Oh, yes. We spent probably 15-20 years getting our franchises healthy. I think there are only three franchises now that are owned by either the people or the families that owned them when I came in. Our ownership group has never been stronger, as wealthy or as committed and as forward-thinking. I would put our ownership group up against any league in terms of its strength and its willingness to work together to build the game that we all love.

"I’m not. Well, at some point I am, but not in the foreseeable future. But at the end of the day, I love what I do." - Gary Bettman on retirement

WGR: Everything that perhaps you set out to do in ’93, you’ve done and surpassed with your team. What’s next for Gary Bettman for next year?

GB: No, no, you don’t get to sit back and luxuriate over what is. If you do that, you fall back. We have to continue, whether it’s working on the evolution of distribution, whether or not it’s the use of technology, whether or not it’s a grassroots program, whether or not it’s the international front. We need to continue to move forward, invest in the game and make sure that we’re giving everybody the best possible sports entertainment experience.

WGR: But is there anything on Gary’s laundry list that you haven’t done yet?

GB: You’re dancing around like, when am I retiring?

WGR: No, no, no.

GB: Because I’m not.

WGR: No, I’m not.

GB: Well, at some point I am, but not in the foreseeable future. But at the end of the day, I love what I do.

WGR: How do you feel about the valuations and how they’re accelerating?

GB: They are accelerating. I think we’re up, I don’t know, 90 percent over the last year or two. I still think we’re undervalued, but we’re better valued than we were. I think there’s a recognition that the sport is growing, that we have an economic system that makes sense, and that we’ve got great fans. And so I think that’s a reflection of a dramatic rise in values, even if I think they could still be higher.

People love NHL hockey. And when they don’t have it but get a chance to be a part of it, they gravitate to it. Utah, Ryan and Ashley Smith, in an amazingly short period of time, with a very difficult transaction, gave us a great opportunity to initiate a new market and helped us solve a problem that was ongoing in a different market. It’s been a great success from Day 1. It’s only going to get better. Not unlike Vegas and Seattle, which I think people think were probably the two at it and decide whether or not it thought this was the right time to expand.

There are four criteria. Ownership is most important, the market has to be able to support a team and an arena, you don’t want to be in a difficult arena situation. You can see when that happens, either for us, as it did in Arizona or even look at Major League Baseball. They have two teams that, for a variety of reasons, are playing in minor-league facilities. And the fourth criteria, which may be after you get through the first three, is “Will it make the league stronger?” And if somebody comes in, checks all those boxes and wants to move forward, we’ll take a look at it.

For this conversation, more interviews and a deep look into the world of the hockey business, check out The Hockey News' Money and Power 2025 issue, available at THN.com/free.