There are euros to be made.
There is an oddity in the National Hockey League’s 2026-2027 schedule. Monday afternoon games. Other than some national holidays in the United States, the NHL has never featured Monday afternoon hockey games but league marketers see an opening as a 2 o’clock eastern time zone game can be shown in prime time on the European continent at 8 p.m. or at 7 p.m. in the United Kingdom. The NHL’s marketing machine seems to be revving up on the European continent where there are euros to be made. The league will also have regular season games in Helsinki, Finland in November and in Düsseldorf, Germany in December.
The league is also pursuing an expansion into Texas and it appears that the preference is to put a team in Houston not Austin according to the league’s deputy commissioner. Bill Daly recently said, “we’re primarily interested and our owners are primarily interested in a potential franchise in Houston. We’d love to open the possibility that we might examine, consider and evaluate Austin, Texas as well, which as you may know is an up-and-coming market. It’s a really cool city and one that doesn’t have one of the major four pro sports franchises in it, so it comes with certain advantages but anyway, we’re in the early stages of this process.” One North American city has been priced out of the NHL, Québec City. The league left Québec City in 1995 because there was no financing available for a new arena. There is a suitable NHL style arena in town today but the league’s expansion is $2 billion and that cost is prohibitive as the $2 billion US price tag is around $2.8 billion Canadian. No potential owner in Québec City has stepped forward.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.
https://evanweiner1.substack.com
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
