The Winter Olympics had many “winners”—the entire Italian team, Norwegian cross-country robot Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, breakout American skater Alysa Liu—but the NHL and NHLPA should be high on any list.
The world’s best hockey league sent its players back to the Games for the first time since 2014 and was rewarded with most North American fans’ dream matchup: Canada and Team USA in the gold medal game, with the U.S. winning 2-1 on a Jack Hughes overtime goal.
Perhaps most valuably, the NHL and its union now have a second major data point on the growing global appeal, popularity and commercial value of “best-on-best” international hockey. And that bodes well for the 2028 return of the World Cup of Hockey, which they own.
“It’s what every American and Canadian grows up watching, grows up caring about,” Team USA forward Matthew Tkachuk told reporters after his team’s semifinal win on Friday. “This is the pinnacle of the sport. This is as good as it gets.“
NBC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation pay billions to televise the Winter Olympics. Sponsors like Visa and Samsung pay billions to sponsor them. Fans pay hefty prices for tickets. While the men’s ice hockey tournament is a big piece of that global interest, the NHL doesn’t share directly in any of those economics. Even promotional and marketing rights around the Games are a delicate balance.
At hockey’s World Cup, all of that will flip. Media rights to the 2028 tournament have not yet been sold—it wasn’t included in the league’s deals with ESPN, Turner or Rogers—and the value of those rights has probably jumped in the past year. As a comparison, the league’s media partners struck new deals for last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off, Sportico reported last year, with smaller packages also sold in a handful of European markets.
The 4 Nations Face-Off during the NHL’s 2025 All-Star break was the first real international competition for many of the sport’s biggest stars, and it achieved a rare moment of virality for the sport in America. More than two dozen sponsors—some existing NHL partners, others new to the league—came in for the tournament, and five of the seven games sold out.
The commercial attractiveness of the World Cup, which is currently soliciting bids from potential host cites in North America and Europe, should be significantly higher.
“None of us anticipated the incredible success of the 4 Nations,” NHL chief commercial officer Steve Mayer told Sportico before the Olympics. “We had to be very reactive. … But now we have a nice blueprint.”
There were many reasons for the NHL’s absences from the 2018 and 2022 Winter Games—Sportico wrote about some of them earlier this week. Simmering in the background was a constant question—one still being considered even with the league’s Milan presence—about how participation in the Olympics impacts the owned-and-operated World Cup of Hockey. Players generally want to represent their countries as much as possible; the league has its own set of priorities. (A similar question hangs over MLB, which owns the World Baseball Classic and balances the sport’s occasional inclusion in the Olympic program.)
The NHL and NHLPA debuted the World Cup of Hockey in 1996, replacing the Canada Cup, and held it again in 2004. From there it sat dormant until a 2016 revival. The league and its union couldn’t reach an agreement on a 2020 event, and the 2024 plans were scuttled during to complications surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Last February, commissioner Gary Bettman and union boss Marty Walsh announced the 2028 return as part of a wider agreement to a more regular cadence of Olympics and World Cups alternating every two years.
Specifics of the 2028 World Cup haven’t been announced. Ice hockey’s global governing body, the IIHF, is not involved, which means it will likely consist only of NHL players. That likely raises a thorny question on the inclusion of a Russian team, currently banned by the IIHF but whose re-inclusion is supported by a large amount of hockey fans. To fill more rosters—and accommodate more stars—the 2016 World Cup had a “Europe” team comprised of countries not otherwise included, and a “North America” team for players under 24 years old.
Many players on that North America roster formed the backbone of the U.S. and Canada rosters at this year’s Olympics, including Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel and Dylan Larkin. For the next generation of NHL stars, representing their country will likely prove much more commonplace. The league and its union will benefit from it.
With assistance from Sara Germano.
(This story was updated with the final score of the men’s ice hockey gold medal game.)
