The NHL should put Mexico City on its Global Series schedule as soon as possible. Not only will that promote the game internationally, but it will boost interest in its product among the large and growing Latino audience in the USA.
And yes, I can hear many readers scoffing at the idea of hockey in Mexico, chuckling that the only ice Mexicans would find interesting is the kind that can chill a margarita. By way of full disclosure, I am downing one now as I write this piece from my sun-soaked Baja casita. Even so, in the sober light of tomorrow morning, I’d still make the case for NHL games in The Land of Mariachi! Here’s why.
The Hispanic Market – NHL’s Next Frontier
There are 64 million Hispanics living in the USA – that’s almost 20 percent of the country’s population. That number is growing rapidly and Hispanics are now America’s second largest ethnic or racial group behind White Americans, but ahead of Black Americans. They are becoming wealthier with rising rates of home ownership. Not only that, but their incomes are rising significantly along with their education level. In short, they are an emerging market that the NHL ignores at its peril.
The eight NHL franchises in Arizona, Texas, Florida, California and Nevada understand this and are taking steps to give their product a Latino accent. That’s despite the fact that the league as a whole has made only half-hearted attempts to address the Latino market.
Take the Dallas Stars for example, who play in a city whose population is 42 percent Latino. Former NHLer Alvaro Silva Montoya (aka “Al Montoya”) is now the Stars’ director of community outreach. The first Cuban American to play in the league, he kept creases over parts of nine seasons with six teams. Within six months of starting his job in 2021, Montoya was on a plane to Mexico City to meet with the Mexico Ice Hockey Federation (MIHF) (From, Lia Assimakopoulos, ‘As NHL seeks to play game in Mexico City, Stars are eager to be among first considered’, The Dallas Morning News, 11/14/23).
The MIHF told Montoya that while hockey isn’t big in Mexico, its popularity is growing – just as it is among Hispanic fans and players in Dallas. As of 2022, the federation claimed there are almost 3,000 players in Mexico, 1,600 of whom are juniors. There are 18 rinks nationwide, four of which are in Mexico City. Even so, there are questions as to how suitable any of them would be for NHL games.
Montoya has two goals – grow the next generation of Hispanic fans and build a bridge to the Latino community that will produce a future cohort of players not only in Dallas, but across the league. He explained, “We might not see players represented from all these communities for a bit, but that doesn’t matter. It matters that we’re making that concerted effort to show that everyone is welcome. I think it’s only a matter of time, and we look forward to that day.” He believes that making Mexico City a stop on the NHL Global series schedule would help the cause.
Under Montoya’s guidance, the Stars have hosted Hispanic Heritage Nights in the past two seasons against the Arizona Coyotes and Los Angeles Kings. Both teams play in cities with large and rapidly growing Latino populations. On offer on those nights were Spanish play-by-play broadcasts. This season, Hispanic Heritage Night in Dallas is scheduled for March 12 when the Stars host the Florida Panthers (from, SportsDay Staff, ‘Dallas Stars announce theme night schedule for 2023-24 season’, Dallas Morning News, 8/16/23).
In case you’re interested in what a play-by-play sounds like in Spanish, watch Timo Meier’s goal as it was called in 2018. At the time he was wearing a San Jose Sharks jersey. The call was entertaining enough that I’d watch all my games in Spanish if I had the option!
The Stars’ president and CEO, Brad Alberts, understands the importance of developing the Hispanic audience for hockey in Dallas and how playing games in Mexico City could contribute to that goal. Says Albert, “We’ve got a million registered Hispanic fans. We felt like we would be remiss by not focusing on that sector of our population to make them hockey fans. We’re committed to doing that and certainly playing in Mexico would be an extension of that.”
NHL Teams Compete to Play in Mexico
The Stars are probably mindful of the Dallas Cowboys’ 2021 deal with the National Football League (NFL) under which the team was awarded a license to expand their International Home Marketing Area (HMA) into Mexico. As a result, some say the Cowboys have now become “Mexico’s team”. The Stars no doubt want to achieve that same status in hockey.
Even so, Dallas isn’t the only franchise with designs on Mexico. The Coyotes, or “Los Yotes” as they are known on the team’s X account (formerly Twitter), have gone to great lengths to cultivate ties to the local Hispanic community.
Related: Coyotes Target Hispanic Market Expansion
Soon after becoming the majority owner of the Coyotes in the summer of 2019, Alex Meruelo created a Hispanic advisory board to help his team market its product to the Latino community. As then-Coyotes president and CEO, Ahron Cohen explained it, “We are very fortunate to have Mr. Meruelo as the first Hispanic owner of an NHL team. We finally have the right person in place to connect with the Hispanic community and build a genuine relationship. I’m very proud of the board we’ve assembled and look forward to working with these great business leaders to develop authentic strategies for reaching out to the Latino community. Our primary focus will be to earn their trust and get more people excited about our team and our great game.”
Meruelo went on to replace Cohen with Xavier Gutierrez, the NHL’s first Latino team president and CEO. Almost immediately he began campaigning for the league to start playing games in Mexico explaining, “I keep telling [the NHL], ‘Guys, I don’t think you understand. If you think there’s a rabid fan base in Australia, any American sport event in Mexico is a massive deal for the country.”
Not to be outdone by the Coyotes and Stars, the Kings have held youth camps in Mexico City. Asked why, the Kings’ director of hockey programming Derek Armstrong explained, “Once you go down and see the quality of athlete down there, the hardest part of hockey is learning to skate, [but] now they have rinks there, [and] the rink that we were in is one of the nicest facilities I’ve ever seen. So, once we get kids skating, to make this a worldwide brand and get some other countries with their better athletes playing hockey, I think it’s very important for the NHL, obviously as well as the LA Kings.”
The Florida Panthers also understand the potential of their local Latino market. It’s why this summer they’ll host the Amerigol-Latam Cup at their practice facility, just as they have done in previous years. The tournament brings together teams from non-traditional hockey markets including eight countries in Latin America.
Staging an NHL Game in Mexico City a Challenge
Ahead of the 2023-24 season, NHL Chief Content Officer Steve Mayer shared on ESPN’s “The Drop” podcast that Mexico City is on a shortlist for future international games. Mayer explained that “Mexico City is on a short list because our teams are very interested in going there and exploring that market. There are teams that would really love to play in Mexico.”
Mayer seems to have the support of NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly in pursuing games in Mexico City. Talking about playing there in 2021, Daly said, “We had started hearing from our clubs that they’d love to play a game in Mexico. The more we can appeal to more demographics, countries and culturally diverse areas, the better it is for us.”
Even so, that’s easier said than done and Alberts knows that. Despite Mayer’s enthusiasm, he says it will take years before the NHL will be able to put on a game in Mexico City. Asked how many, he said that’s unclear – “Not 10, but not two either. This isn’t like we’re going to a Scandinavian country where hockey is played. This one will take a little longer. You’ve got to get the operational logistics figured out, but then you’ve got to make sure there’s a fanbase to support it. The last thing we want to do is go play a game down there and then not be able to sell tickets.”
There is also the issue of a proper venue. Some speculate that the league might go big with a game held inside Aztec Stadium in Mexico City, which seats over 87,000 fans. But Mayer said the league is also looking at indoor game options, explaining that, “Mexico City, because of climate, might be a little more difficult to go with an outdoor game. But those things are challenges for us that we love to take on.”
NHL Behind Other Leagues in the Mexican Market
Other major professional sports leagues in North America recognize the potential that the Mexican market could hold for their games. They’ve decided they simply can’t ignore Mexico City with its 9.2 million people. It’s the biggest city in North America and ranks seventh largest in the world. Yet it seems the NHL is just starting to wake up to that fact.
The NFL has staged five regular season games in Mexico dating back to 2005. Not only that, but it has played seven exhibition games in the country. There were none scheduled this past season, but that was only because of repairs being undertaken at Aztec Stadium in Mexico City.
The potential of The Land of Sun has not been lost on Major League Baseball (MLB) either. Mexico City has seen 14 regular season MLB games, with the first dating back to 1996.
Not to be outdone, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has organized 18 pre-season games in Mexico – the first dating back to 1992. The latest took place in 2023. From 1997 to January 2024, the league staged 13 regular season games in Mexico.
Historically, neither baseball, basketball nor football were ever popular among Mexicans. Even now, soccer and bullfighting are the country’s favorite sports. Despite that, the big three sports have grown in popularity in no small part because of the marketing investments the MLB, NBA and NFL have made in Mexico. By contrast, the NHL seems content to simply stick its proverbial toe in Mexican waters rather than make a serious effort to grow its game there.
NHL Needs Latino Stars
One of the lessons the NBA learned in marketing its game in China is that a native son playing in the league drives a lot of interest in basketball among Chinese fans. The case in point here is Yao Ming, who played eight seasons with the Houston Rockets from 2002-2011.
While there’s no prospect of a Mexican player cracking an NHL roster any time soon, there have been plenty of players in the league with Latino heritage. The Toronto Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews is the best-known of them (his mother Ema is from Hermosillo, Mexico). Matthews says he’s “grateful to be a Mexican American. I’m proud of where I come from.” While his spoken Spanish is weak he understands it. You wonder whether, with a little work, he could speak the language well enough to become the face of hockey in Mexico.
Matthew is pushing for the NHL to play a game in Mexico. Have a listen to what he said about playing there in a recent interview.
There’s a long list of NHLers with a Latino heritage. Just to name a few, the first player of Latino descent to play in the NHL was Bill Guerin, now the general manager (GM) of the Minnesota Wild. He played in the league from 1992-2010 and has two Stanley Cup rings to show for it. His mother was born and raised in Nicaragua. Scott Carlos Gomez has a Mexican American father and a Colombian mother. Max Pacioretty’s mother was Mexican.
Not only that, but the NHL’s connection to Mexican hockey goes back to at least 1965 when 16-year-old Mexican prospect Chaco Roberts came to Montreal to work out with the Montreal Junior Canadiens. The team’s coach, Scotty Bowman, would go on to become one of the NHL’s greatest bench bosses. He was scheduled to travel to Mexico City the following year to assist in the development of a Mexican hockey program. Nobody seems to know whether he made it.
Push Into Mexico Important for NHL
I’m under no illusion that it would be easy for the NHL to put Mexico City on its Global Series schedule. Yet three of the big four sports leagues in North America have put themselves on the map in Mexico and the NHL can too. It’s a must if the league is to expand into new Latino markets in the US and grow its game internationally.