NHL needs to reverse this trend soon. Their presentation is being ruined by oversaturation of ads and now politics too, and it's reaching a tipping point for all the major leagues. It should be very worrisome to owners and executives that ratings of sports are down significantly even with people locked up inside and consuming more media to pass time.
Sports viewership is under significant long term pressure from expanding video games market and proliferation of high quality streaming services. The past year has seen a reorientation of habits, some temporary of course, but also accelerated some other trends like this. Sports viewership was a net loser despite the leagues' efforts to get their show back on.
Ads now all over playing surface, every inch of boards and bench, ads in front row seating of arenas, ads projected onto glass on TV, onto TV clock display, ads replacing announcers during play breaks (non-TV time out), etc. Every one diminishes the aesthetic of the presentation a bit more. People will say it doesn't matter and we are inured to them, but is it a coincidence that the media that is killing cable TV and sports is ad free? No ad oversaturation on Netflix or when you are playing video games.
I know the NHL is hurting bad here since they are missing gate revenue, but the past 10 years the trend has been to place ads EVERYWHERE. The NHL will need to radically re-think their presentation and clean it up because right now it is an over-commercialized mess. Reality is though we are probably witnessing the end of the famous sports bubble that we've speculated a lot about the past few years of TV mega deals. NHL will have to reform to this evolving 21st century media landscape while likely seeing stagnating or even declining revenue, and solutions going full Euro uniforms with ads or extending TV timeouts are not winners. A cleaner, more pleasing presentation will be part of it.