You'll never know how much you miss something until it's gone, right? Well, that seems to be the case for the NHL, who, after spending months fiddling around with contract negotiations and delaying the start of the season, is seeing record viewership numbers for televised games. 

The abbreviated season finally got under way in January (after Nike reminded the big wigs at the NHL who's really the boss). But NBC Sports had a few tricks up their sleeve to ramp up excitement in a shorter amount of time. 

Viewership during the regular season went up 18 percent over last year, Forbes reports, making this the most-watched regular season in 19 years. Seven of the top eight NHL telecasts of the season came during NHL Sports Network’s new Wednesday Night Rivalry, which featured games between some of the league’s longest and feistier rivals. It drew some of the larger sponsors, too, including Discover and Verizon.Continue reading...

Most Americans had never heard of Jason Collins before Monday. Even the large majority of NBA fans wouldn’t have immediately placed him, even though he’s played on six teams over the course of 12 seasons. Now he’s going down in the history books as the first active male athlete on a major US sports team to reveal he's gay.

After breaking the news on the cover of Sports Illustrated, the social web lit up with support for the Washington Wizards center, who said he first contemplated coming out during the 2011 lockout, and then was further motivated by the Boston Marathon bombings.

Thankfully, the sporting community and the world in general have changed a lot in recent years, as those that have come before Collins—like the NBA's John Amaechi and tennis legend's Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King—faced harsh criticism from peers and big financial losses from sponsors.

But as for Collins, his announcement will likely be followed up by a multitude of endorsement deals from top brands and maybe even a new contract for next season.Continue reading...

Starting last Thursday, bigwigs from the NFL’s 32 teams gathered at New York’s Radio City Music Hall to select young players in the hopes that they would become the next John Elway, Gale Sayers, or O.J. Simpson. (Well, OK, maybe not O.J.)

Since 1980, the Draft has been televised and it audience has grown exponentially, with an expected viewership of 50 million for this past weekend's broadcast, Ad Age reports. With that kind of captive audience, sponsorships and advertisers have grown as well. There were 19 official sponsors of the event this year, up from 16 last year. The list included Anheuser-Busch, Nike, Verizon, Pepsi, GMC, Visa, EA Sports, Under Armour, Gatorade and Castrol. It's no doubt that the big names spent more than the $15 million spent across ESPN and the NFL Network last year and the $11.9 million spent the year before.

"To the credit of the NFL, it's the most robust league," Ernest Lupinacci, founder of branding consultancy Ernest Industries, told Ad Age. "They announced the [2013 regular season] schedule and people went crazy. It was as if they let us know they were bringing the McRib sandwich back."Continue reading...

While NBA fans who are lucky enough to get playoff tickets will file out of each game wearing pretty much anything that has their team’s branding on it, the players they worship will be making completely different choices—and every apparel brand out there would love for that choice to involve them.

In last year’s Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Miami Heat, the Thunder’s Russell Westbrook let the world know that he thought he was responsible for the hipster trend to wear funky lensless glasses, USA Today recalls.

The playoffs just started this past weekend but it’s already gotten off to a good jump on the fashion front as the Heat’s LeBron James dropped some jaws (and not in a good way) with his Tommy Bahama-esque shirt and James Harden of the Houston Rockets showed up for post-game interviews wearing a shirt that involved a whole lot of pleather. Los Angeles Clippers stars Blake Griffin and Chris Paul also got into the act. Russell Westbrook wore a sleeveless leather top and gold bedazzled high tops after his team’s game Sunday.Continue reading...

President Obama may have picked Indiana University to win this year’s whole NCAA men’s basketball tournament, but there is a lot of basketball to watch between now and the final championship game on April 8. 

Brand marketers are very attracted to all those eyeballs, and the ones associated with specific teams and the NCAA are no different. College sport’s governing body will find any way it can to lodge its name into the minds of viewers when it takes center stage in college tournaments and championships.

It turns out that the court itself is the latest branding target as evidenced by the mountain-image-riddled court in Las Vegas that hosted the Mountain West Conference last weekend, the New York Times reports.Continue reading...

Beginning Sunday with the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament selection show on CBS, March Madness will get a grip on America. And that's the cue once again for a number of prominent brands to try to get a grip on March Madness fans.

Among brands that will be either sponsoring March Madness telecasts or advertising heavily during the next few weeks on the broadcast and cable networks that carry the 68-team tournament are Buick, Acura, Dove Men+Care and ING.

"The goal with March Madness advertising is reaching that core target and gaining prestige with them by associating with a prestigious event, as well as reaching next-generation fans and that passion of the recent graduate," Gary Robinson, manager of advertising and brand for Acura in the U.S., told brandchannel.Continue reading...

On Wednesday night, Kobe Bryant became the fifth and youngest member to enter the NBA's exclusive 30,000 point club. He joins Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Karl Malone and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, as the NBA celebrates in its video recounting Bryant's journey.

Somebody at AT&T likes to see the company's logo around town. Dallas was named as the location for its new headquarters in 2008 and, since then, the telecommunications giant has put its name on the AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic and the AT&T Performing Arts Center there. Now, they are adding another local sponsorship: the AT&T Byron Nelson golf tourney, which serves as a fundraiser for both Salesmanship Club Youth and Family Centers as well as the pocketbooks of a few big-name pro golfers.

This will actually be the second PGA tournament that AT&T will sponsor, having signed on with the inaugural big-bucks National event held in the D.C. area every Fourth of July weekend since 2007. AT&T will have to wait till 2015 to get its name on Byron Nelson, though, since HP has its name there till then (and has had it there since 2003), according to PGATour.com.Continue reading...