Gary Bettman
Gary Bruce Bettman is an American sports executive who serves as the commissioner of the National Hockey League, a post he has held since February 1, 1993. Previously, Bettman was a senior vice president and general counsel to the National Basketball Association. Bettman is a graduate of Cornell University and New York University School of Law. Bettman was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018.
He oversaw the expansion of the NHL's footprint across the United States, with eight new teams added during his tenure, bringing the NHL to 32 teams since the start of the 2021–22 season. In May 2014, Bettman was named "sports executive of the year" by the SportsBusiness Journal and SportsBusiness Daily. In 2016, Bettman was inducted as a member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
Bettman's tenure in the NHL has been controversial. He has often been criticized for attempting to give the game a mass appeal, and for expanding the league into non-traditional hockey markets such as the United States' Sun Belt at the expense of the more traditional markets in Canada and the Northern United States. Bettman has also been a central figure of three labor stoppages, including the 2004–05 NHL lockout that saw the entire season canceled. These controversies have made him unpopular with many fans around the league.
Education and family
Bettman was born to a Jewish family in Queens, New York. He studied industrial and labor relations at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he was a brother of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, and graduated in 1974. After receiving a Juris Doctor degree from New York University School of Law in 1977, Bettman joined the New York City law firm of Proskauer Rose Goetz & Mendelsohn.Bettman lives with his wife, Shelli, and their three children Lauren, Jordan, and Brittany. He is a resident of Saddle River, New Jersey. His half-brother Jeffrey Pollack is also a sports executive and served as President of the XFL from 2018 to 2021.
NBA
Bettman joined the National Basketball Association in 1981, serving mainly in the marketing and legal departments. Bettman rose to third in command of the NBA, spending many years as the league's general counsel and senior vice president. Bettman played a key role in the development of the soft salary cap system implemented and agreed by the NBA in 1983, a system it continues to use today.NHL commissioner
On December 12, 1992, Bettman was elected as the first commissioner of the National Hockey League. He took office on February 1, 1993; until July 1 he served alongside Gil Stein, who served as the NHL's final president. The owners hired Bettman with the mandate of selling the game in the U.S. market, ending labor unrest, completing expansion plans, and modernizing the views of the "old guard" within the ownership ranks.Expansion, relocation and realignment
When Bettman started as commissioner, the league had already expanded by three teams to 24 starting with the 1991–92 season, and two more were set to be announced by the expansion committee: the Florida Panthers and Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, who would begin play in 1993–94. Led by Bettman, the league focused expansion and relocation efforts during the rest of the 1990s on the American South, working to expand the league's footprint across the country. The Nashville Predators, Atlanta Thrashers, Minnesota Wild, and Columbus Blue Jackets completed this expansion period, bringing the NHL to 30 teams. In addition, four franchises relocated during the 1990s under Bettman: The Minnesota North Stars to Dallas, the Quebec Nordiques to Denver, the original Winnipeg Jets to Phoenix, and the Hartford Whalers to North Carolina.This move towards southern markets was heavily criticized as well, however, with fans in Canada and the Northern United States lamenting the move away from "traditional hockey markets". Critics have also accused Bettman of having an "anti-Canadian" agenda, citing the relocation of the franchises in Quebec City and Winnipeg and his apparent refusal to help stop it, along with the aborted sale of the Nashville Predators in 2007 to interests that would have moved the team to Hamilton, Ontario. Jim Balsillie accused Bettman of forcing the Predators to end negotiations with him to purchase the team. Bettman was satirized in this vein as the character "Harry Buttman" in the 2006 Canadian movie Bon Cop, Bad Cop.
However, Bettman also championed the Canadian assistance plan, a revenue sharing agreement that saw American teams give money to help support the four small-market Canadian teams—Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, and Vancouver—throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The results of expanding to southern markets has been mixed. There has been significant growth in the sport of hockey at the grassroots level with children in the U.S. South playing the game in increasing numbers.
However, some of these southern teams have not been financially successful. The Phoenix Coyotes eventually filed for bankruptcy in May 2009, after incurring several hundred million dollars of losses since their 1996 move from Winnipeg. Under Bettman, the league then took control over the team later that year in order to stabilize the club's operations and then resell it to a new owner who would be committed to stay in the Phoenix market. It took several years for the League to find a viable ownership group, even then the new ownership group was unable to secure a new arena for the team in the 2020s and they relocated to Salt Lake City in 2024.
After joining the league in 1999, the Atlanta Thrashers suffered financial losses and ownership struggles, while appearing in the playoffs only one time. In 2011 they were sold to True North Sports and Entertainment, who then relocated the team to Winnipeg, a stark reversal of the league's attempts to expand into the southern markets.
During the late 1990s round of expansion, the league revised its four-division alignment into one containing six divisions that eventually each contained five teams. At the time, seventeen of the league's thirty teams were based in the Eastern Time Zone, meaning that the two westernmost such teams were compelled to compete in the Western Conference, which gave a large proportion of their road games an unfavorably late start on local television. There were other grievances with the alignment—for example, the Dallas Stars, being in the Central Time Zone, were not pleased to be in the same division as the Coyotes and the three Californian teams.
Detroit and Columbus were fierce opponents of Balsillie's bids for a team in Hamilton but also strong backers of Winnipeg's bid for the Thrashers, largely since this took the franchise out of the Eastern Time Zone and thus provided them a path to be realigned into the Eastern Conference. Following intense negotiations brokered by Bettman among the owners and with the players, the NHL reverted to a four-division alignment in time for the 2013–14 season, with two divisions of seven teams each for the West and two divisions containing the sixteen remaining Eastern Time Zone teams for the East.
An expansion occurred in the summer of 2017, with Las Vegas, Nevada, gaining the league's 31st team, the Vegas Golden Knights. Bettman later explained that the NHL's new divisional alignment precluded the adding of more franchises in the Eastern Time Zone, at least for the time being.
The most recent expansion occurred on December 4, 2018, with the announcement that Seattle would be the league's 32nd team. The Seattle Kraken started in the 2021–22 NHL season. Bettman chose Seattle as it is one of the fastest growing cities.
Labor unrest
Although Bettman was tasked with putting an end to the NHL's labor problems, the league has locked out its players three times during Bettman's tenure.1994–95 lockout
The 1994–95 lockout lasted 104 days, causing the season to be shortened from 84 to 48 games. A key issue during the lockout was the desire to aid small-market teams. Led by Bettman, the owners insisted on a salary cap, changes to free agency, and arbitration in the hopes of limiting escalating salaries. The union instead proposed a luxury tax system. The negotiations were at times bitter, with Chris Chelios famously issuing a veiled threat against Bettman, suggesting that Bettman should be "worried about family and well-being", because "Some crazed fans, or even a player might take matters into their own hands and figure they get Bettman out of the way."Last-ditch negotiations saved the season in January 1995. And while the owners failed to achieve a full salary cap, the union agreed to a cap on rookie contracts, changes to arbitration, and restrictive rules for free agency that would not grant a player unrestricted free agency until he turned 31. The deal was initially hailed as a win for the owners.
2004–05 lockout
By the end of the deal in 2004, the owners were claiming that player salaries had grown far faster than revenues, and that the league as a whole lost over US$300 million in 2002–03.As a result, on September 15, 2004, Bettman announced that the owners again locked the players out prior to the start of the 2004–05 season. Five months later, Bettman announced the cancellation of the entire season:
The NHL therefore became the first North American professional sports league to cancel an entire season because of a labor stoppage, and the second league to cancel a postseason.
As in 1994, the owners' position was predicated around the need for a salary cap. In an effort to ensure solidarity amongst the owners, the league's governors voted to give Bettman the right to unilaterally veto any union offer as long as he had the backing of just eight owners. The players initially favored a luxury tax system, and a 5% rollback on player salaries—later increased to 24 percent. As the threat of a canceled season loomed, the players agreed to accept a salary cap, but the two sides could not come to terms on numbers before the deadline expired.
Following the cancellation of the season, negotiations progressed quickly, as a revolt within the union led to National Hockey League Players' Association president Trevor Linden and senior director Ted Saskin taking negotiations over from executive director Bob Goodenow. Goodenow would resign from the NHLPA in July 2005. By early July, the two sides had agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement. The deal featured a hard salary cap, linked to a fixed percentage of league revenues, a 24% rollback on salaries, and free agency beginning after seven years of service. After being panned as one of the worst managers in business in 2004 for canceling the season, Bettman was lauded as one of the best in 2005 for his role in bringing "cost certainty" to the NHL.