New Amsterdam Becomes Official Vodka Of The NHL

The National Hockey League has signed a three-year agreement with New Amsterdam Vodka, which provides the brand the rights to market itself as the Official Vodka of the NHL.

The deal was signed in the wake of the NHL’s agreement with Diageo expiring. That Diageo deal was so expansive that it prevented the NHL from doing category agreements with brands within the alcohol beverage space.

Since the expiration of the Diageo deal, the NHL had already brokered a business relationship with Jagermeister, which is now the Official Shot of the NHL. It is fair to expect that the NHL will soon work on carving out different alchohol beverage deals such as rum, as the Ultimate Fighting Championship did in early September.

One category not currently up for grabs is beer. The NHL currently has a deal with MillerCoors that began in 2011, pays roughly $400 million, and expires at the end of the 2018 NHL season. Thus, a new deal in that space could also be announced within the next calendar year.

New Amsterdam is entering into its arrangement with the NHL after working with some baseball and football teams. However, it has never had a league-level partnership prior to engaging with the NHL. The brand plans to focus a lot of resources on professional hockey and has hinted that it is working on signing up roughly ten NHL teams to expand its local/regional footprint as it concurrently activates on the league-level.