Land ice hockey + small program, the latest combination of NHL to explore the Chinese market

With Beijing Zhangjiakou’s successful bid to host the Winter Olympic Games in 2015, China’s favorable policies on ice and snow have emerged frequently. As the largest ice hockey league in North America, NHL, which has been striving for internationalization, certainly does not want to miss this visible emerging market.

However, the development of ice hockey in China has not been affected by the epidemic. According to the International Hockey Association (IIHF), from 2019 to 2021, the number of international registrations of Chinese jerseys online male and female athletes and referees has increased by 2-4 times, and the number of youth hockey jerseys cheap registrations has exceeded 8000.

Ice hockey has higher requirements for athletes’ technology, equipment and facilities. However, high barriers are not a good thing for promoting a “new sport”.

In order to let more people participate in ice hockey, NHL international affairs department started the first pilot project in China – land ice hockey course. Although the project received good feedback at that time, it failed to achieve our long-term goal of letting young people learn ice hockey and introduce healthy and active lifestyles to them at the same time. ” By the end of 2020, NHL North American Ice Hockey League app came into being to promote land ice hockey and build an online ice hockey community.

In the NHL North American Hockey League’s small program, including land hockey courses, teachers’ land hockey online and offline training registration, NHL’s latest information and similar ins photo stream and other functions, we hope to provide a learning and exchange platform for junior land hockey and ice hockey fans.

“We spent a year thinking about how to bring ice hockey to more people, and finally decided to develop a small program, hoping to bring ice hockey to more people through the combination of online and offline.”

The following is a summary of an interview with mark black, vice president of NHL’s international affairs department

Lazy bear Sports: what do you think of the development of Chinese Ice Hockey after NHL entered the Chinese market?

Blake: our focus in China is to establish a basic environment for popularizing the sport. Our initial task is to better understand the Chinese market, what is happening in the Chinese Ice Hockey circle, what challenges we have encountered and what help we can provide. Soon we found that although China’s ice hockey population is small, but generally very enthusiastic, so our task now becomes to let more people understand and participate in ice hockey, so that ice hockey can reach more people, which is why we launched the NHL jerseys cheap land ice hockey project for the Chinese market.

We know that Chinese children have great potential for skating, which is also the key to the smooth development of ice hockey. Besides, if ice hockey practitioners can work together, I think ice hockey has a bright future in China.