North American ice hockey’s NHL has renewed its regional partnership with IT company Presidio, which will continue as the league’s official technology and innovation partner under a new multi-year agreement.
The renewal builds on the pair’s original agreement, struck in 2023, and will see Presidio continue to enhance the league’s technological infrastructure, including integrating data and using managed service to support day-to-day operations, as well as designing and creating applications to support the broadcast of more than 1,300 games annually.
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Peter DelGiacco, NHL senior executive vice president & chief technology officer, said: “Presidio is a core partner in the NHL's technology transformation, helping us modernize our infrastructure, advance our AI capabilities, and deliver smarter experiences for our teams and fans.
“We're building something genuinely differentiated here, and this extended partnership reflects the confidence we have in what we're creating together.”
The partnership’s primary achievement to date is the creation of the NHL Draft app, where all information is synced across the NHL’s ecosystem, which has enhanced the process, including accessing data, including player information, submitting player picks, announcing player selections, trades, and more.
Presidio also designed and operates the Virtual Technology Operations Center – a centralized system that integrates dozens of production workflows and venue feeds into one interface to support live game production across the NHL season.
Among other improvements, Presidio helped the league and tech giant Apple create the NHL Watch Comms App that gives on-ice NHL officials real-time notifications. The app is used by 95% of on-ice NHL officials.
The renewal announcement comes two days after the NHL Board of Governors meeting in New York, which saw the NHL owners approve the sale of the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Hoffman Family of Companies (HFC), the family-owned private equity firm of billionaire David Hoffman, ending Fenway Sports Group’s five-year ownership of the franchise.
The deal, valued at around $1.7 billion, will see Hoffman’s son, Geoff Hoffman, become the Penguins' governor and comes a year and a half after FSG hired Allen & Company and CAA to explore a minority stake in the franchise, which eventually pivoted to a majority stake during negotiations.
Following the meeting, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman also announced the league will open a six-month process to evaluate a franchise expansion in either Houston or Austin, Texas.
Bettman unveiled the Friedkin family, led by Friedkin Group chief executive Dan Friedkin, as prospective owners of the Texas expansion franchise, which would be the league’s 33rd team.
The Friedkin family owns English soccer’s Everton FC and Italian club AS Roma.
The league has now agreed with the family to explore the feasibility, with the family to pay around $3.5 billion to cover the expansion fee and cost of building a new arena, which both cities require.
