Our sports marketing team has spent the last few years building some incredible fan engagement partnerships across leagues and clubs, and when you explore a new partnership, it's the passion of a fan base and the culture around the game that pulls you in. That's what we found with the National Hockey League (NHL). As a marketer, that's the tell — when you find that kind of passion, you know it’s the right place for Adobe’s AI-powered solutions to help fans create and share what the game means to them, while helping the League build deeper, more meaningful relationships with fans around the world.

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Hockey tends to get into people early. A cold rink before school. A long bus ride with teammates. A game watched next to someone who loved it first. It builds a community that’s competitive and close, proud of the game and quick to protect it — personal in a way that few sports still are, right down to the art on a goalie’s mask.

That connection carries high expectations from a fanbase of more than 200 million people across 147 countries. For the NHL, keeping fans connected to the sport means moving as fast as the game itself — and delivering experiences that reflect what each fan cares about, whether they’re following a club online, watching a broadcast half a world away, or sitting close enough to the rink to hear the puck skid across the ice.

As the 2026–2027 regular season kicks off, Adobe and the NHL are launching a global partnership, with Adobe named an Official Creative, Marketing, and AI Partner of the NHL. Through Adobe CX Enterprise, Adobe Firefly, and Adobe Express, the partnership will power a more personalized fan experience across channels, markets, and Clubs while also opening new opportunities for fans to express their own passion for the sport and its players.

“The NHL’s greatest strength has always been the passion our fans bring to the game,” said David Lehanski, NHL Executive Vice President of Innovation and Growth Strategy. “As the ways people follow sports continue to evolve, our focus is on creating experiences that feel as dynamic and compelling as the game itself. Adobe will help us unlock new ways to tell the stories of our Players, Clubs, and moments that define hockey, while giving fans more opportunities to be a part of it. This partnership reflects our commitment in continuing to evolve how fans connect with the game they love.”

Keeping pace with the speed of the game.

The NHL has spent a century building relationships with fans worldwide. Now, Adobe will bring the orchestration to help deepen those relationships, providing the League and its 32 Clubs with access to solutions designed to help create and deliver content at the pace and scale of an 84-game season, without losing what makes each fan community distinct.

The hockey season doesn’t wait for a production schedule. Games, highlights, milestones, and storylines arrive faster than most teams can keep up with. Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing, Adobe’s AI-powered content supply chain solution, will help the League create and adapt on-brand content in step with the season’s nonstop rhythm. The NHL will be able to tailor experiences across NHL.com, the NHL app, social media, and digital advertising for different markets and languages while maintaining the look, feel, and standards fans recognize as uniquely NHL.

But creating content is only part of the equation. To deepen engagement, that content also needs to reach the right fan at the right moment, which is where Adobe Journey Optimizer comes in, bringing personalized experiences to life online and in-arena. A fan following a favorite club from another country, for example, might see content adapted for their market and language, then receive tailored updates across the NHL app, web, and email as the season unfolds.

The same technologies helping the NHL reach fans in more personal ways will also help its creative teams tell the game’s stories in new ways. The NHL is exploring Adobe Firefly, Adobe's family of generative AI creative models and applications, to accelerate ideation and creative development in pre-production. By helping teams explore more concepts, iterate faster, and collaborate more efficiently, Firefly will give NHL creatives greater freedom to bring hockey’s stories to life across the season. For fans, that means richer experiences that deepen their connection to the players, rivalries, and the moments at the heart of the game.

The game is bigger than the rink.

Looking ahead, Adobe Express, Adobe’s create-anything app, could give fans new ways to create and share what the game means to them, from a tribute to a favorite player to a reaction to an overtime win. Generative AI from Adobe Firefly and NHL-themed templates could be used to support fan creativity while keeping core brand elements consistent.

The partnership will enhance the fan experience across the NHL’s global footprint, spanning some of hockey’s biggest moments, including the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the NHL Global Series, North American events, and US and international broadcasts, with the same goal — meet fans where they are.

The broader partnership also includes the opportunity to utilize Adobe Brand Concierge and Adobe Brand Visibility, creating opportunities for fans to discover, explore, and engage with the NHL across brand-owned and AI-powered experiences.

As the NHL grows the game at home and around the world, Adobe will help it build on something hockey already does better than almost anyone — turning individual moments into connections that last a lifetime. I can’t wait to see what that looks like at a global scale.

Learn how Adobe is helping sports organizations turn every fan moment into a more personal, connected experience.

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