NHL sees TV subscriptions doubling

By Ben Klayman

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The National Hockey League expects to double subscriptions to the new U.S. arm of its television network over the next year, the commissioner of the North American sport said on Tuesday.

"We launched about a month ago and we're in somewhere around 12 million homes," Gary Bettman said at the Reuters Media Summit in New York. "I expect over the next year to see that number double, at least."

The NHL Network in the United States, launched in October, is accessible to about 80 million U.S. homes through such cable TV operators as Comcast Corp, Time Warner Cable Inc and Charter Communications and satellite operators like DirecTV Group Inc.

The network got its start in Canada in 2001 and has almost 1 million subscribers there. Bettman said some media companies he would not identify own stakes in the network.

Many U.S. sports leagues, including the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association, have launched their own TV networks as a way to boost revenue, improve league image and control their own content.

Bettman also said the NHL is content with the current number of teams in the league and has no plans to expand, contract or relocate teams to new cities.

Some analysts and observers of the sport have speculated that some of the teams in the U.S. South should be folded or relocated to Canada, where hockey is the most popular sport.

Bettman helped to stoke speculation in May when he said he was "intrigued" by the idea of returning to Canadian markets such as Winnipeg, where the NHL has had teams in the past. On Tuesday, he said that had been blown out of proportion.

"There's been no discussion of contraction," he said. "We believe, particularly under our current system, that all of our markets can support their clubs."

During Bettman's tenure, the NHL has added six teams to bring its total to 30. It has also expanded into new regions, including the U.S. South and Southwest, and in 2005 established a new economic system that includes a cap on player salaries to ensure economic viability.

"We're not currently engaged in an expansion process and we're not currently engaged in trying to relocate any clubs," Bettman said.

Three years after shutting down the league for the season in an effort to rein in player salaries, Bettman said he was pleased with the current collective bargaining agreement, though he did not rule out the NHL tweaking it at some point in the future.

He also said the NHL has not seen a significant impact from the housing slowdown and tighter credit markets in the United States as the crowds at the games are bigger this season.

"Our attendance is actually up over 2 percent, and that's coming off of two years of record-setting attendance," he said, pointing out that the weak U.S. dollar also had aided the fortunes of the league's six Canadian teams.

(Additional reporting by Paul Thomasch)

(Reporting by Ben Klayman; editing by John Wallace and Dave Zimmerman)