North American ice hockey’s elite NHL has struck a new multi-year deal with building solutions firm Honeywell, which becomes a global partner of the competition.
Honeywell will serve as the official building automation and energy management partner of the NHL.
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Beyond the typical brand activations and integrations, Honeywell will operate across the league’s 32 member teams and their respective venues in order to aid their efforts to create “more resilient, energy efficient arenas, practice facilities and community rinks.”
To this end, Honeywell will ply the NHL franchises with its AI-powered automation technology to support the growing power usage and cooling demands, and aid revenue growth through logistical streamlining.
Speaking on the agreement, Honeywell's president for the Americas, Juan Picon, said: “Today’s hockey venues are highly complex, dynamic environments where efficiency and reliability directly impact performance and business outcomes.
“By optimizing building automation and energy management, Honeywell is well-positioned to help the League, its teams and local communities create more resilient, digitally enabled facilities that reduce operating costs, protect revenue streams and deliver seamless, secure and high‑quality fan experiences.”
David Lehanski, NHL executive vice president for business development and innovation, added: “The partnership with Honeywell unlocks proven technology and expertise that can help our clubs expand efficiencies, intelligence, and optimization, while creating a blueprint for strategic, long-term investments to support community rinks that are essential to the future of our great game.”
This agreement comes off the back of a strong season of regular-season viewership growth across the NHL’s national broadcasters.
Warner Bros. Discover-owned TNT Sports, for one, delivered its strongest year of regular-season NHL ice hockey coverage to date, with the 2025-26 campaign growing by double digits percentage-wise year-on-year.
Through 72 nationally televised regular-season games, NHL viewership on TNT Sports grew 21% to 381,000, and attracted a cumulative figure of over 20.4 million viewers, up 37% year-on-year.
Disney-owned ESPN and ABC also managed a more successful season than 2024-25, averaging 790,000 viewers, with ESPN alone averaging 602,000 (up 48% year-on-year) and ABC averaging 1.1 million (up 33%).
