NHL commissioner Gary Bettman can be quite difficult to pin down. As quickly as reporters can present a query, Bettman can sidestep with a general answer and move on. After over 33 years on the job, he’s got plenty of experience. However, Tuesday, before the Pittsburgh Penguins faced the Vegas Golden Knights at PPG Paints Arena, it was one tacit admission, and one answer Bettman didn’t give, that was the story.

Last season, the NHL experienced record attendance and continued revenue growth. The salary cap will continue rising for the foreseeable future, which is proof of rising revenues, and that is Bettman’s primary function. It’s about league growth, monetarily.

Undeniably, attendance this season is dropping. The Vegas Golden Knights announced the end of their sellout streak. The red-hot Edmonton Oilers have seen large swaths of empty seats in Rogers Place. And some teams are seeing attendance rates drop into the 80% range.

That’s a problem, right? While different markets have unique challenges, such as the Columbus Blue Jackets facing decades without success, or the Penguins slumping on the ice, one common theme cited across the fan bases is the affordability of attending games.

The average cost of a ticket to get into a Penguins game is now $84, according to TicketData. And that doesn’t count the ancillary costs of parking or concessions. The cost across the NHL to take a family of four to a game is $350, with 77% of that being ticket prices. Yet in a casual press conference in a side locker room Tuesday with Pittsburgh media, Bettman dressed in a sweater and jeans, flatly dismissed affordability concerns.

“Overall attendance is up, and so if you’re looking at a couple of instances where there have been some empty seats, there are generally specific reasons for them, and not the same reason in each place,” said Bettman. “But overall attendance is up, and we’re coming off a record year.”

Well, no, attendance isn’t up. Using Kalshi’s analysis, the overall average attendance is down by about 150 fans per game, which isn’t much, but the downward trend will rapidly increase because this season’s sample size is small and average attendance is still buoyed by the capacity crowds of the home openers and subsequent early home games, which draw well.

It should be a concern to the league but apparently is not. The average US household makes just over $87,000, which, when factoring in $75 fill-ups and 25% inflation since 2020, isn’t as affluent as it might seem. The median personal income is just over $46,000. All of which means a $100 per person (or $400 per family) night out can be unattainable to a very large number of people.

Dynamic pricing further raises prices, especially around the holidays.

Bettman is correct that there are mitigating factors in various markets. There are such reasons as losing teams and the current tiff between Americans and our northern neighbors, which has lessened fan travel, but the NHL dismisses the common complaint of affordability at its own expense.

Expansion?

Another of Bettman’s answers was notable. He strongly emphasized the word “if” when asked about expansion, which just a couple of months ago was presumed to be a foregone conclusion.

“I think there’s IF there’s expansion, and I’m not sure that the board, who has final say on that, is committed to expansion, but I think interest will get a very serious look by the board,” said Bettman.

First, Bettman is regarded as the most powerful commissioner in sports and has only firmed up his leadership in recent years. If he doesn’t know if owners want expansion, then it’s a likely no.

The if is the big note. The NHL board of governors meets in a month (Dec. 10-11), and if expansion were pushing forward, that meeting would be when decisions are made. However, to be very non-committal, just a month out from the meetings, it very much seems like expansion is in doubt. Otherwise, Bettman would have been touting optimism, not caution.

Remix Jersey Cash

By Vince Comunale:

The Penguins debuted their new “Hometown Remix” uniforms on Tuesday night against the Vegas, adding one more look for fans to keep track of. If you’re keeping score at home, that makes four: road white, home black, alternate gold and now Hometown Remix blue.

The new sweater pairs the franchise’s original 1967 blue with a pop-art design honoring Pittsburgh native Andy Warhol. It is part of a league-wide program: the NHL and Fanatics announced Hometown Remix in August, and after months of leaks, all 32 teams’ jerseys were revealed and put on sale on Nov. 2. According to NHL.com, Hometown Remix uniforms will appear in 261 games this season, including 19 games in which both teams wear them.

Once upon a time, National Hockey League teams sported a single home and road set, and that was it. But that was long ago. In the current era of super-marketing, most NHL teams consider a third (or fourth) jersey a first priority.

A handful of teams were early adopters of alternate sweaters, such as the Penguins’ canary-yellow “Sunday” sweaters of the 1980s, but third jerseys didn’t really take off until the mid-1990s. According to the NHL Uniform Database (nhluniforms.com), the league’s third jersey program commenced in 1995-96, when five teams unveiled a third jersey: Anaheim, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Boston. Who could forget that gold Bruins jersey that many fans affectionately dubbed the “Pooh Bear” sweater?

The following season, more teams joined in. The New York Rangers added a third jersey for the first time in franchise history before the 1996-97 season, and Tampa Bay and Chicago followed suit that same year. By the year 2000, nearly every team had a third jersey.

Still, the NHL never had a league-wide alternate jersey program until Reverse Retro arrived in November 2020. Each jersey was inspired by one worn during a season of some historical significance to the franchise. Most franchises simply took a jersey from their past and swapped the primary and secondary colors. It worked for many teams, but some looked rather outlandish. Still others borrowed from the days when their franchise was located in another city. The most talked-about Reverse Retro jerseys were the Carolina Hurricanes’ and Colorado Avalanche’s, which reached back to their days in Hartford and Quebec, respectively. The Reverse Retro jerseys had some fans dishing out the green to buy them, while other fans were seeing red, both literally and figuratively. A second Reverse Retro set followed in 2022-23.

Hometown Remix takes a different approach. Rather than simply reaching back into each team’s history, every design is built around the team’s city and local culture. The Penguins’ version manages to do both.

Regardless of the look, there’s really only one reason teams keep rolling out new jerseys: revenue! Whether it’s in Canadian or American currency, new jerseys mean big money for the league and its teams. Just last season, according to Sports Business Journal, the Dallas Stars broke the league’s single-game record for in-arena merchandise sales (outdoor games excluded) following the release of their highly anticipated ’99 alternate jersey. According to The Hockey News, the jersey’s Black Friday launch was the most successful single day of jersey sales in NHL history.

The league is betting Hometown Remix will set sales records of its own. According to ESPN, Fanatics projects that Hometown Remix will be the highest-grossing merchandise program in NHL history. Brian Jennings, the NHL’s chief partnerships and club strategy officer, told ESPN that retailer orders for the Hometown Remix jerseys are four times larger than they were for the league’s second Reverse Retro campaign.

Penguins fans will have plenty of chances to add to those sales, as the team’s website and shops are now loaded with all sorts of Hometown Remix merchandise. Just be ready to open your wallet. At PensGear, the Penguins’ team store, a Premium Hometown Remix jersey with Sidney Crosby’s name and number costs a whopping $285. A youth Crosby jersey runs $185, and even the infant version is $70.

Where you buy that jersey matters, though. According to a CBS Minnesota (WCCO) report, between 11 and 15 percent of licensed merchandise sales goes to the league, which then shares that money equally among its teams. But according to a 2017 Las Vegas Review-Journal article, merchandise sold in a team’s own building stays with that team. So a Penguins jersey bought from a league retailer like NHL Shop helps Philadelphia just as much as it helps Pittsburgh, but one bought at PPG Paints Arena goes straight to the Penguins. That is why a hit design like the Stars’ ’99 jersey pays off most for the club that wears it, and why the Hometown Remix jerseys give every team a reason to pack its team store this season.

If history is any guide, Hometown Remix won’t be the last program of its kind. The NHL and Fanatics plan to use fan response to shape future programs. So if you’re not a fan of the Penguins’ new jersey, their 11th different sweater in the past 12 seasons (counting outdoor-game sweaters), fret not: another one is almost certainly coming in the not-too-distant future.