Hockey Isn't Underpaid Because It's Unpopular. It's Underpaid Because of Where the Money Comes From

Every time one of these contracts lands, and there have been a lot of them this summer, somebody points out that it's still nothing compared to the other leagues. Celebrini just became the highest paid player in hockey at 18.8 million a year. That would make him roughly the 80th highest paid guy in baseball.

And the usual explanation is that hockey is just smaller. Niche sport, cold weather game, nobody watches.

That explanation is getting less true by the year, and the actual reason is way more interesting.

Start with the growth, because it's real. The NHL is projecting eight billion in revenue, up from about six and a half the year before. That is not a slow climb, that's a jump. Record attendance last season, over 23 million fans, buildings basically full everywhere. Bettman said every single revenue source is growing. Players went to the Olympics for the first time since 2014. Playoff viewership has been on a genuine run. The All-Star Game next year is being built around an international format. Hockey is doing fine.

Now put the revenue side by side. NFL is around 22 billion. Baseball and basketball are both around 12. Hockey is coming up on eight.

So hockey is behind, sure. But it's not eight-times-behind the NFL, and the salary numbers are way more lopsided than the revenue numbers. Which means revenue size alone doesn't explain it.

Here's what does.

Look at where each league's money actually comes from. National revenue, which is mostly television, makes up 62 percent of what the NFL takes in, about 13.8 billion dollars. For the NHL it's 18 percent. About 1.4 billion.

Instead, hockey makes 44 percent of its money from seats and suites, the highest share of any major league. Roughly a third of all league revenue is just ticket sales.

That's the whole thing right there. Hockey money comes from people in the building. Everybody else's money comes from people on the couch.

And that matters because those two things scale completely differently. There are about 18,000 seats in an NHL arena and 82 games. That's a hard ceiling, and the league is already basically bumping into it. You cannot sell more than every seat. Television has no ceiling at all. The NBA just signed an eleven year deal worth 76 billion dollars. That's around seven billion a year. Hockey's current deal with Disney and Warner Bros is 4.5 billion over seven years, which is something like 640 million a year.

More than ten times the annual television money. That gap, not popularity, is the reason Celebrini makes 18.8 and a decent baseball starter makes more.

The cap is tied to revenue. Revenue is tied to where the money comes from. Hockey's money comes from the most loyal fans in sports showing up and paying, which is genuinely something to be proud of, and it is also the least scalable revenue on earth.

Which brings me to the part I actually find exciting.

That media deal has three seasons left on it.

The NHL is walking into that negotiation with record revenue, record attendance, a playoff viewership surge, Olympic exposure for the first time in over a decade, and a fan base that demographically looks like the country instead of a niche. If they convert any of that into a real step up in television money, the cap doesn't creep, it jumps. It already went from 83.5 million a few years ago to 104 this season to 113.5 next.

And selfishly, that's good for us specifically. We've got Aho locked through 2032 at 9.75. Slavin through 2032. Jarvis through 2032. Blake and Stankoven through 2034. Every dollar the cap goes up, those contracts get better without anybody signing anything.

The rest of the league is paying today's prices. We're paying 2025 prices until the next decade.

Hockey growing is good for hockey. It's even better for the Hurricanes.

Go Canes.