Rare bird: The Penguins’ Sidney Crosby is one of the few NHL players to earn seven figures on the ice. The Pittsburgh star center earns an estimated $5.5 million annually from endorsements and other business activities.
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On a crisp September afternoon in Los Angeles, three days after Sidney Crosby signed a two-year contract extension with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Pat Brisson could only laugh when asked about his $17.4 million contract. . โWhat are you going to say?โ he said in his French-Canadian lilt. “For the record, he may have had more money.”
Brisson would know. The 59-year-old super agent has negotiated NHL-record $1.4 billion active contracts with stars such as Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche, Jack Hughes of the New Jersey Devils and Elias Pettersson of the Vancouver Canucks. Ta. His agency, CAA, co-leads a hockey group of about 30 employees with J.P. Barry, which has about 100 NHL players on its roster and active player contracts under its management. $2.1 billion, a figure surpassed only by Newport Sports Management’s $2.3 billion. $1 billion, according to contract database PuckPedia. CAA’s clients include five of the 10 highest-paid players in the NHL this season.
But Brisson also knows that ultimately his job is to make his players happy, even if it means less money than they could get on the open market. And while there is no doubt that CAA is a business, it has been named the most valuable sports agency by Forbes magazine for nine consecutive years, and last year became the investment company of French luxury goods magnate Franรงois-Henri Pinault. The company, which was reportedly acquired for $7 billion, understands the same. Finances take a backseat to the goal of running a 360-degree operation for customers (or, as CAA Sports co-head Howard Nusho puts it, “being important to the players in as many areas as possible”) when there is a need.
Since CAA Sports was launched in 2006, the agency’s signature focus on service has meant helping athletes grow their social media presence and launch their businesses. could mean. Or it might mean tying players together with tickets to a basketball game or a Broadway show. Whatever it takes to recruit and retain customers, even if it costs a lot of money up front and doesn’t see immediate returns.
For now, marketing remains part of the loss-making equation, with limited revenue generated from hockey endorsements and licensing deals. But this is also a new area of โโfocus for the agency, which in May hired David Aburtin as the hockey group’s first global chief operating officer (COO), overseeing the division’s operations, marketing and customer management. He expanded his on-ice operations with director Jen Kaldosh. And the CAA believes the economic realities of the sport may finally be changing.
Don’t get me wrong. That change is not easy. Forbes estimates that CAA Sports will have $3.76 billion in active non-playing contracts in 2022 under management in categories such as marketing, media and coaching, with hockey accounting for only a small portion of that. This year and future books include $28.3 million. Cardosz said he was involved in more than 175 transactions. Forbes estimates that CAA’s hockey clients currently include Crosby ($5.5 million), MacKinnon ($3 million), Boston Bruins right wing David Pastrnak ($1.5 million), and Washington Capitals forward David Pastrnak ($1.5 million). Only four players currently have a seven-figure differential: left wing Alex Ovechkin ($5 million). Like only a handful of guys across the league who are on the ice every year.
That’s on par with the millions of dollars LeBron James made from his NBA sneaker deal, which earned him an estimated $70 million off the court last season, and Carlos Alcaraz’s tennis apparel partnership, which earned him $32 million off the court. No player would want that. The past year. For most hockey players, marketing opportunities are often local deals that reach five figures a year, and are sometimes built around free product rather than cash. Sponsorships also tend to be concentrated on players from Canada or players contracted to Canadian teams, making them especially difficult for Europeans to obtain.
So even though agents can charge an industry-standard commission of 20% for endorsement deals (five times the typical commission on NHL playing contracts), the math doesn’t quite add up. (If we apply these rates to active contracts under CAA control, hockey groups could collect up to $84 million in fees on the ice, but less than $6 million off the ice.) To justify this effort, the calculation must go beyond dollars and cents. In Barry’s words, top-tier marketing teams need to consider the “stickiness” they can provide by keeping their client’s content on CAA.
agent Dee Rizzo and Colorado Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon, CAA’s Jen Kardosch and Pat Brisson;
@RileySmith
โWe always care about the bottom line, but we know the reality today is that these guys are going to make a lot more money playing hockey than they make on the ice. Just because the funding isn’t right doesn’t mean you can’t take a chance,” Cardosz added. Exposure to new fans, that’s my number one priority. โ
Still, the CAA is optimistic that the framework can change. Riding a wave of exciting young talent, NHL national broadcasts averaged 504,000 viewers during the 2023-24 regular season, an 8% increase over the previous year and 2015-16, according to Nielsen. Since then, it has become the best record in the league. The number of visitors also increased, reaching a record 22.9 million. Higher visibility usually means higher marketing spend, and in fact, according to Sportico, advertising spend in 2023-24 will jump 27% compared to the previous season, according to research firm Team sponsorships increased 10% to $1.4 billion, according to research from Sponsor United.
The prospects of the players are also increasing. NHL stars set to return to the Olympics in 2026, league announces new international tournament with four-nation competition in February as streaming services open up new markets in Europe It’s planned. Meanwhile, several NHL players appear in the new Amazon Prime Video documentary series “Faceoff,” from Box To Box Films, the production company that helped fuel the growth of F1 in the United States with Netflix’s “Drive to Survive.” (CAA’s Brisson was instrumental in persuading Box to Box producer Paul Martin to create a new show and allow hockey novices to attend two games.)
CAA sees these efforts not only as an opportunity to make money, with dozens of clients featured in the documentary series and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on revitalizing the Olympic brand, but also as the NHL is emerging from a long-running operation. I also see it as a signal. We use a team-first marketing strategy and focus on the players.
“From Bird to Magic, Michael to Steph, LeBron to Kobe, the stars that the NBA used for marketing in the ’80s and ’90s were always a huge part of the matrix of success,” Abrutin says. “Last year it was very much Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers,” he added of the NHL storyline, referring to rival agency Wasserman’s star client. The nuances are different.โ
Perhaps just as important is the continued evolution of NHL player culture, which so far has been “about the logo on the front, not the name on the back,” Cardosh says. Now, a generation raised on social media isn’t just aspiring to be the next Mario Lemieux or Mark Messier. “They’re looking at LeBron James and Shohei Ohtani and F1 drivers, but a lot of those athletes have more opportunities in the marketing space, and the client is saying, ‘We want that opportunity too, how can we do that?’ Cardosz specifically singled out Trevor Zegras, the 23-year-old Anaheim Ducks center who gained attention online as a rookie in the 2021-22 season, as a catalyst within the CAA.
CAA is also keen to explore on- and off-ice potential in women’s hockey, with Kardos and Dominique Didia spearheading an effort to sign 18 players, including 11 from the PWHL, starting in 2022. There is. “There’s going to be a lot of people who want to invest.” There are people in the PWHL who don’t want to invest in the NHL, and we want to be a part of those conversations,” Cardosz said, adding that University of Minnesota star Chloe Primerano says the signing of Quench Hydration was an early win for the group.
Especially with the PWHL’s top salary hovering around $100,000, CAA has largely foregone on-ice commissions and the financial viability of its operations is far off. But the agency’s hockey group has found success by thinking long-term, often signing male clients at the age of 13 or 14 and mentoring them in player development efforts led by Jim Hughes. “It usually takes seven years before you hopefully start paying your bills,” Brisson said. But on the positive side, Brisson represents the 17 players the CAA has selected in the first two rounds of the past two years’ draft, with Brisson being the No. 1 overall pick in the past 19 drafts, including Maclin Celebrini in 2024. He has worked with nine designated players.
While Nusho says no one is “running the scoreboard,” one of the reasons CAA Sports is now bigger and growing faster than the company’s storied entertainment division is because of its hockey group. It is in existence. But Brisson, described by colleagues as “relentless,” “24/7” and “machine-like,” continues to think about expansion. Now, that means marketing.
โI think itโs in my DNA,โ Brisson says. “I don’t know. I always tell my groups, the day you start sitting on your glory, you’re gone.”
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