NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman broke the news over the weekend at the 2018 NHL All-Star press conference, confirming they will unveil an official e-League later this year.

The NHL’s e-League will feature professional-level competition for NHL 18, developed by EA Canada and published by EA Sports, one of the largest gaming companies in the world. NHL 18 is the latest entry in an annual franchise which is considered the premier hockey video game in the world.

The series is under official license from the NHL to use the league’s colors, player names and likenesses, stadiums, and team names in the game, so it is the most appropriate game for the NHL to use for its esports foray.

Further details, including whether the NHL have an official partnership with EA to launch their new esports league, are presently unknown.

However, Bettman did confirm more news will come before the end of the regular season “when [they are] ready to launch.”

The news of NHL’s esports initiative, while surprising, has been hinted at in past meetings and buyouts for at least two years now.

Canadian sports journalist Elliotte Friedman confirmed in his 31 Thoughts column that the NHL discussed moving into esports at the Board of Governors meeting in December 2016.

“Ignore this at your peril, and the NHL isn’t. No one from the league will comment at this time, but it looks like the plan is to start small — then morph into something much bigger,” Friedman wrote of the NHL’s plans.

One NHL franchise, the Philadelphia Flyers, currently own an Overwatch League esports team called the Philadelphia Fusion and the Colorado Avalanche also have an unspecified stake in another OWL team.

The NHL joins the NBA and NFL as the latest North American sporting organization to enter the booming esports market, predicted to become a $2.3 billion industry by 2022.

The NFL have secured lucrative deals with both Disney and EPSN to broadcast the Madden NFL 18 Championship Series, another annual video game franchise developed by EA Sports with official NFL backing.

Meanwhile, the NBA has its own partnership with Take-Two Interactive, the publishers of the world’s most popular annual NBA series, NBA 2K, to launch the NBA 2K league in May. 17 of the NBA’s 30 teams have pledged their support for the inaugural esports season.

How will NHL 18 translate an esports league?

NHL 18 is one of EA Sports’ most underrated annual sporting game franchises in terms of quality and online popularity.

The multiplayer component of the game has a large portion of hockey fans who buy the game every year for the 6-on-6 team modes, which can easily be organized to play with or against friends and random opponents, and the netcode is significantly better than many other modern-day sporting games at the moment.

The game itself is solid, but it is up to the NHL to structure it right and make watching competitive virtual hockey just as thrilling as watching it live.

The ideal scenario for its long-term success would be to have the majority of the 31 teams support the e-League from the get-go, but we’ve also seen the NBA 2K League’s smaller amount of sponsors work out just fine for its inaugural season.

The NHL aren’t too far behind their basketball and football counterparts in diving into the esports industry at just the right time and we can definitely see its e-League attract a more mainstream audience to the overarching esports scene.

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The broadcast deal was announced before the final rounds of the ongoing EA Sports Madden NFL 18 Club Championship kicked off this past weekend, an EA Major event which leads the top competition into the next championship event.

It will also include future e-Leagues featuring the annual Madden video game franchise.

“We’re thrilled to continue and expand our relationship with EA and the NFL in not only showcasing to our audiences these world class esports competitions for multiple years, but using the myriad of ESPN and Disney global platforms to tell the incredible stories of these competitors,” ESPN VP John Lasker said in an official statement.

The Madden NFL 18 Club Championship (MCS) hosts the best esports players from Canada, Germany, Mexico, United Kingdom and United States battling for the title of Madden 18 champion and a slice of the US$1.15 million prize-pool, the largest amount of prize-money offered for competitive Madden or any comparable virtual sporting league to date.

Players qualify for the MCS by competing in three EA Major events or playing Madden 18 online on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One to achieve the highest ranking and series points in one of three designated modes – MUT Champions, MUT Draft, and MUT Salary Cap. Alternatively, there are other EA-sanctioned Challenger Events for late-stage qualification.

The next event in the Madden Championship Series is the Madden NFL 18 Ultimate League on February 2, scheduled to run for over two months. This is a multiweek tournament which features 16 of the best Madden players across eligible regions in a one-on-one gameplay format.

The top competitors from Ultimate League will eventually advance to the NFL Draft on April 28 – six players who secured first and second place at one of the three previous EA Majors and 10 players who earned the highest Madden Championship Series points throughout the MCS season.

This is ESPN’s first long-term broadcasting agreement for a recurring competitive esports league. Disney XD have previously aired esports events on its network for popular games such as Street Fighter V and Super Smash Bros Wii U.

“We are excited to partner with EA SPORTS and ESPN to bring the Madden Club Championship and Madden Ultimate League to the millions of Madden NFL fans globally and to broadcast these competitions from our key fan events, like the Super Bowl and the Draft,” NFL’s chief strategy officer, Chris Halpin, said in a official statement.

“We are also thrilled to be the first major professional sports league to have every team represented in a premier esports event. We are confident our fans will love the competition and action.”

Developed by EA Tiburon and published by EA Sports, NFL 18 and its predecessors are considered the premier virtual American football experience in competitive gaming circles.

The NHL were one of the first North American sporting leagues to establish an esports league ahead of the NBA and NHL’s own e-League launches planned for later this year.

The Madden Championship Series is also the only one to have every single team represented in its esport counterpart.

It’s busy times for American sports fans who love their video games, with the NBA and Take-Two Interactive set to launch their NBA 2K League in May, while the NFL and EA Sports just announced their intentions to launch an e-League later this year.

While betting markets for these traditional sporting e-Leagues are scarce compared to other popular favourites like League of Legends or Overwatch, the larger investment in prize-pools from EA Sports and the huge mainstream push from their new broadcasting partners should see our options expand very soon.

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