• by Karl Greenberg , November 7, 2010

Discover has inked a one-year deal to be an Official Partner of the National Hockey League in the U.S. The sponsorship, the first time the league has had a major credit card sponsor since MasterCard in 2006, also marks Discover as the Official Card of the NHL, NHL All-Star Weekend, NHL Winter Classic, NHL Awards, and the NHL Entry Draft. And Discover will be presenting sponsor of the NHL All-Star Game.

The deal extends Discover's limited involvement in hockey. Discover also can develop hockey-themed rewards and customer experiences across NHL special events. A sweepstakes under Discover NHL Rewards Program offers the winner a chance to spend the day with the Stanley Cup.

Discover NHL Rewards will offer redemption of Cashback Bonus rewards for discounts to Shop.NHL.com and the NHL Powered by Reebok store in New York City, GameCenter Live subscriptions, and autographed NHL merchandise. The Discovery deal tops a big season of new-sponsor signups for the league with seven new partner brands, and five renewals. The company says it has at least a 20% overall increase in corporate sponsorship revenue compared to last season.

The league is also launching its own marketing program, a joint venture with Stan Lee of comic book fame, for "The Guardian Project," that gives each NHL team a superhero mascot.

Dave Lehanski, group VP sponsorship and sales, says the last two years have been especially good for the NHL. "It's two things: the market is rebounding and we are seeing more interest among fans, and more willingness among marketers to pursue partnerships with us." He says Hershey's, LG, and Canadian Tire retail have all come on as Canada market partners in the past year. Lehanksi says the league now has around 17 sponsors on board.

"If you look at the ratings in the U.S. -- broadcast and cable, dot-com traffic, ticket sales, digital consumption of video -- everything has increased over the last four years and most particularly over the last two years. Certainly, we'd like to think it's because of the work we're doing around the Winter Classic, Game Center Live, the refreshed site, in general, but it's also a little bit of luck. We have an incredible crop of new talent, and many of the new players happen to be in big markets like Boston and Chicago. That's the kind of luck you can't predict or influence."

Discover advertised around the NHL games last year with NBC and Versus, says Lehanski. "They saw a good fit and results and when they scratched the surface and looked at demographics, it grew from that." He says there's also a good fit between NHL and Discover, partly because the league has a credit card sponsor for Canada in Visa. "In addition to us providing them branded exposure, they are doing the same for us, promoting the NHL brand to their card members."

Other partners are increasing their involvement as well, per Lehanski. Verizon, for instance, is doing a co-branded mobile app for NHL. Honda may be back as well. "That's not official yet, but it looks like they will be back. Anheuser-Busch's renewal is also coming up," he says.