Gary Bettman: The Ironman of the NHL and League Bosses
January 27 marks the 11,318th day that Gary Bettman has been the commissioner of the NHL, which makes him the longest-serving leader of any major league, including the NFL, MLB or the NBA.
January 27 marks the 11,318th day that Gary Bettman has been the commissioner of the NHL, which is one more day than Clarence Campbell served as the boss. It also makes Bettman the longest-serving leader of any major league, including the NFL, MLB or the NBA. Bettman, the ironman of league bosses.
As part of its special section previewing the 1993-94 NHL season, the Hartford Courant published perhaps the most prophetic sentence that Gary Bettman ever spoke. On Oct. 5, 1993, the day before the first games of Bettman’s first full season as NHL commissioner, Viv Bernstein’s two-page story was headlined by an NHL shield that was surrounded by the words “NEW AND IMPROVED!”
“While dealing with the issues of the day,” Bernstein wrote, “Bettman also has plans to market the NHL in a way that will someday put it on a par with the other major sports, financially and perceptually. But he realizes it’s going to take some time.
“There’s a big challenge here,” Bettman said. “I’m not lacking for challenges. As long as it’s on the right track and the owners will have me, I’m in this for the long haul.”
Bettman’s haul is about to become the longest in pro-sports-leadership history. And that’s a lot of history, given that MLB, the NBA, the NFL and the NHL have been entertaining fans for a combined 433 years.
Across the centuries of home runs and touchdowns, slapshots and slam dunks, only 10 individuals have served their respective sports as commissioner, while 19 others have been empowered as presidents. They have served as briefly as the 123 days that Gil Stein ran the NHL between president John Ziegler’s departure and Bettman’s formal arrival. They have served as long as NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle (29 years, nine months and 11 days from 1960 to 1989), NBA commissioner David Stern (exactly 30 years, from 1984 to 2014) and the NHL’s Clarence Campbell, whose term as president ended in 1977 after 30 years, 11 months and 25 days.
On Jan. 27, the tenure torch passes when Bettman’s time in office passes that of Campbell. In a run that spans four decades, and more than 55 percent of all NHL games ever played, the quality of Bettman’s pioneering advancement has more than matched the quantity of his executive endurance. He has influenced positive transformation in virtually every area of the game and business.
A league created in 1917 is younger and more vibrant than ever. There were 60 NHL employees when Bettman started; there are 800 today. The average player salary was $463,200 in 1992-93; it’s over $3.2 million today. The social-media audience when Bettman began was zero, because there was no social media when Bettman’s term began; today’s social-media audience, across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X approaches 21 million. League-wide revenue, some $450 million when Bettman started, is on track to surpass $6 billion this season.
The day after that story ran in the Hartford Courant in 1993, the Montreal Canadiens opened the defense of their 24th Stanley Cup championship with a 5-1 victory over the Whalers at the Hartford Civic Center. At the end of that season, the Whalers were sold to Peter Karmanos and Thomas Thewes for $47.5 million.
This past October, when the 31st full season of Bettman’s tenure began, the Vegas Golden Knights raised their Stanley Cup banner to the ceiling of T-Mobile Arena. The Golden Knights then opened the defense of the desert franchise’s first crown with a 4-1 victory over the Seattle Kraken. In 2016, Golden Knights owner Bill Foley agreed to pay $500 million for his expansion franchise. In 2021, Seattle’s ownership group paid $650 million for entry into the league.
Just a few weeks before the Golden Knights hosted the Kraken on opening night, the sale of the Ottawa Senators to Michael Andlauer was confirmed by the NHL’s board of governors. Coming less than two years after the $900-million sale of the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Senators sold for $950 million. The Ottawa deal raised a number of eyebrows, and Sal Galatioto, who brokered it, was among those impressed by the impact of the transaction.
“I feel that Gary Bettman has been underappreciated during his tenure as commissioner,” said Galatioto, the president of Galatioto Sports Partners and a veteran of sports-franchise sales. “He has done an incredible job in repairing a broken economic system by negotiating a salary cap with the Players’ Association, growing the NHL’s visibility all over North America and beyond, and significantly increasing media revenues.
“In addition, Gary has built a first-class team of professionals at the NHL’s office and has helped spur outstanding growth in the value of NHL franchises. The media often overlooks the rapid growth in these values. In 2003, I represented Eugene Melnyk in the purchase of the Senators. Eugene paid $90 million for the franchise. This past year, I represented Eugene’s estate in the sale of the team for $950 million. I can’t think of anything that shows the great job that Gary has done any more than that.”
Except none of these successes stands alone. One of Bettman’s favorite expressions is, “Everything is related to everything else,” and the two latest franchise sales are perfect examples.
Potential owners now engage more with the NHL because its economics are stable, its revenues continue to grow, revenue sharing supports the franchises that earn it, the on-ice entertainment is exceptional, and the demand for franchises far exceeds the supply.
Broadcasters have been willing to spend more for NHL rights because while the length of games is more predictable (it was two hours and 27 minutes for regulation play last season, down a full eight minutes from 1992-93), the games’ outcomes are less predictable than ever. Multi-goal comeback wins are almost routine, which keeps viewers – and, let’s face it, gamblers – engaged longer. That also means more eyeballs on late-game commercials, which advertisers appreciate.
Top sponsors have been more eager to attach their brands to the NHL because the speed and skill on display has never been higher. Meanwhile, advancements in technology such as digital dasher boards and player- and puck-tracking – and, of course, streaming – open an array of opportunities that appeal to viewers.
Regardless of their size, a generation of top players has emerged because they have come through the ranks under rules that prioritize ability.
The framework for all this success was put in place through the implementation of those rules and the advent of the current economic system. That system, secured at great cost, was formalized on July 22, 2005. To spare you from having to look it up, that was five days after Connor Bedard was born. Carolina’s Brent Burns and Minnesota’s Marc-Andre Fleury are the only current players who competed in NHL games prior to that date.
So, Bernstein was a bit of a prophet as well. Because today, the NHL, in many respects, is “on a par with the other sports, financially and perceptually.”
In other ways, it is ahead.
On New Year’s Day, the Golden Knights and the Kraken, the two teams who joined the NHL for a combined $1.15 billion, faced off at Seattle’s T-Mobile Park in the Winter Classic – an event which first made its impact on the sports world in 2008, nearly 15 years after Bettman’s first day on the job. The Heritage Classic preceded it, of course, in frigid Edmonton on Nov. 22, 2003.
Outdoor play was unthinkable when Bettman took the helm. So was Olympic competition for NHL players. The notion of an NHL franchise in Columbus or Nashville, much less one in Vegas or Seattle, was sheer fantasy. When Bettman first walked through his office door, it was enough of a chore simply to keep in business some of the franchises he inherited. Barely a month into Bettman’s first five-year contract, on March 9, 1993, owner Norm Green reached an agreement to move the Minnesota North Stars to Dallas.
The relocation to Dallas was only one of a daunting list of franchise issues in those early days. Time and again, in a city such as Pittsburgh or Buffalo or Calgary or Edmonton – and later in Glendale, Ariz. – Bettman would stand at a chamber of commerce breakfast or a fan-club meeting or a public hearing and face fans who feared their team might leave, too. He promised them everything possible would be done to keep their team in place, then worked relentlessly to live up to his word. This is what commissioners do.
“NEW AND IMPROVED!”– Headline from Viv Bernstein's story from the Hartford Courant
“Fans want to focus on the game and the players,” said Bettman recently. “I’m not sure they care, or should care, about what we have to do behind the scenes to make it happen. That’s our job as executives in a sports league and as teams. We need to make it happen, and we owe it to the game and the fans to do that. You have to be able to multi-task, and you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to make it happen. And there are no excuses.”
The “no excuses” tagline applies even when uncharted waters are approached. None of the other 28 league presidents and commissioners confronted challenges as monumental as the lost NHL season in 2004-05 and the unprecedented menace of the global pandemic that began in January 2020.
“Nobody had ever cancelled a season before, and in some respects, that prepared me for the pandemic, because we got some experience on how to operate when you’re not operating,” Bettman said. “(In 2004-05), we did what we had to do to right-size the league and make the game healthy. The salary cap (and) revenue sharing is what gives us the competitive balance that we have, gives us the opportunity to emphasize speed and skill.
“The pandemic may have been harder, only because of the uncertainty. I kind of knew how the yearlong work stoppage was going to turn out, it was just a question of time. With the pandemic, there was so much uncertainty from a medical and health standpoint, and then creating the ‘bubbles’ and making sure that we kept people healthy and safe, and playing in empty buildings.
“I believed that our fans had invested emotionally, and financially, in the season that we had to put on pause, and that we had an obligation to the game, to our fans, to try and bring closure to that season.”
In 2004-05, Bettman faced an NHL Players’ Association that was in defiance of the league. But in the face of COVID, the players’ co-operation and collaboration likely could not have been greater.
“The players were great,” Bettman said. ”We had to figure out a format, since we didn’t complete the regular season, and figure out playoff eligibility. We created two bubbles, one in Toronto and one in Edmonton, the two major cities in North America that then had the lowest COVID rates, which is why we went there. I think we did 33,000 tests, with daily testing of everybody who was in the bubble, and we didn’t have one positive. And the fact that the players were willing to do this, to go away from home, some of them for eight to 10 weeks, be tested every day, live in the bubbles away from their families, wouldn’t have happened if the players and the Players’ Association hadn’t really just co-operated and gone all-in with us. And we’re grateful that they did that.
“That season, we were off about 20 percent on our revenues by having not completed the regular season in the normal course and having played the playoffs in the bubble. That was the 2019-20 season. I guess we were projecting $5 billion in revenues, and a billion of that didn’t get achieved for the reasons that I just mentioned. The following season, when we played a 56-game schedule, we opened late, we were playing in empty buildings in a lot of places, we had to realign because we couldn’t cross the border between Canada and the U.S. That season, our revenues were off more than 50 percent. But once COVID was over, we’ve come back. Last year, we approximated $6 billion, and this year, we’ll be incrementally growing above that.”
That’s an impressive figure, one that arguably would challenge the aggregate business amassed by Frank Calder, Red Dutton, Clarence Campbell, John Ziegler and Gil Stein combined. Continually “new,” perpetually “improved,” the bigness of the NHL’s business didn’t really start until Gary Bettman’s long haul began.
Frank Brown served as a communications executive with the NHL from 1998 to 2018.
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