On the 18th January 2017, Tencent and the National Hockey League (NHL) jointly announced in Beijing, that they just officially signed a strategic partnership agreement. Tencent will become the official digital media partner of the NHL in China for the next 5 seasons starting from the 2016-17 season. With this partnership, Tencent has achieved close cooperation with three top professional sports leagues in North America, namely the NBA, NFL and NHL.
This is the first time that the NHL has ever set up a strategic cooperation with Chinese digital media. In the future, Chinese ice hockey fans will be able to watch live broadcasting, VOD and short videos of NHL across various mobile and PC platforms, such as qq.com, v.qq.com, sports.qq.com, news.qq.com, as well as the QQ and Wechat apps.
Tencent and NHL are also planning further cooperation on sponsorship rights, offline activities & events, video games and e-commerce.
As a result of the cooperation with NHL, Tencent will further increase investment in the NHL and winter sports events content. So far it has invited top Chinese hockey experts, like He Huan, Li Longmou, Sun Daye and so on, to be match commentators. It will also produce and broadcast videos about historic moments, event titbits and player interviews from the NHL.
Tencent has contract agreements with many national and global sports events. It has been cooperating with the International Skating Union (ISU) since last year and has obtained the exclusive rebroadcasting rights of multiple ISU events. These include the World Short Track Speed Skating Championships, the Speed Skating World Cup, the World Speed Skating Championships, the World Figure Skating Championships and the Four Continents Figure Skating Championships. Tencent also provides videos of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). As the only Internet service partner of the Chinese Olympic Committee during 2013-2020, Tencent also enjoys related rights, such as being the only Internet service partner of the Chinese Delegation for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games.
Source: sports.21cn.com
Proofread by Sean O Diobhilin