NHL Trolls Olympic Video Ban With Throwback Animated Short Viewed By Millions

The NHL is using an animated, retro cartoon to troll the International Olympic Committee over its ban on sharing hockey highlights. The video, with over 5.8 million views as of Sunday, could help decide whether professional athletes participate in future Olympics and shape social media’s emerging role in covering the games. On Thursday, when Team Canada blanked Czechia 5-0, the opening goal came off the stick of the Great White North’s youngest player, Macklin Celebrini. It was a shining moment for the NHL’s return to the Olympics after a 12-year absence. But few were able to see it.In years past, it would be standard cross-promotion for the NHL and Sharks to share a highlight like Mr. Celebrini’s goal. Keeping fans engaged is of particular importance since the league is suspending play and trade activity for the three weeks of the competitions at Milan, Italy.The NHL agreed to go dark at the peak of its season, when there’s no competition from football or baseball games. They are also exposing their stars to the risk of injury by letting them skate in the international tournament, factors that fans expect to be outweighed by a better chance at bringing home the gold.But because of the IOC’s video copyright rules, NHL fans are being iced out of replays. A further challenge is the time difference, which means game times in the wee hours of the morning. The NHL drew attention to the situation with an animation of Mr. Celebrini’s performance produced by an anonymous artist, NBA Pain.The NHL shared the 26-second video on X with the phrase “Celebrini cinema.” The league tagged Peacock, USANetwork, and CBC outlets. It left off NBCUniversal, which holds the American broadcast rights for the games — a move interpreted as a tweak of the IOC. The video was produced using MS Paint, 40-year-old software whose drawings resemble a child’s crayon sketch. Despite its rudimentary graphics, fans love the program. In 2017, they rallied to reverse Microsoft’s plans to discontinue it as a pre-Photoshop, pre-AI relic.In the NBA Pain rendering, Mr. Calibrini’s eyebrows appear in a determined scowl before he scores; after, a teammate carries him aloft in celebration. The program’s tools are visible throughout, invoking the Looney Tunes shorts where an unseen animator torments Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, breaking the fourth wall.The video didn’t infringe on copyright the way a more polished recreation might have done and garnered a lot more eyeballs. The crude rendering drew attention to the fact that subscriptions to places like NBCOlympics.com are required to follow the fortunes of America’s Olympians. NBCUniversal owns the rights to all Olympics through 2036. The legacy broadcaster may be exacting a measure of payback from the NHL by limiting footage to its outlets like Peacock. NBC Sports ended a 16-year deal with the league in 2021, judging that ESPN was getting more favorable terms. But being excluded from coverage didn’t seem to be in the offing when the NHL and NHL Players’ Association announced their deal to join the games in July. The NHL’s deputy commissioner, William Daly, told the press that the agreement with the IOC “broke new ground a little bit in terms of our commercial rights.” Mr. Daly said that the NHL had gained in areas including “content capture” of video and would “have the ability to utilize Olympic content in a different and better way than we have in the past.” Instead, the world’s top hockey league has been reduced to covering the fastest game on ice with static pictures and text.The MS Paint video reminded American fans that they have limited options for following their country’s fortunes in this Olympiad. The parody of Mr. Calibrini helps focus frustration on NBCUniversal and mocks their monopoly, putting pressure on them to stop hogging the puck on footage.Expect video rights to loom large in negotiations over players from the NHL and other professional leagues participating in future Olympics, including the 2028 Summer Games at Los Angeles. Since the games are all about seeing a country’s best players compete, putting them behind a strict paywall just doesn’t seem like fair play.

NHL Trolls Olympic Video Ban With Throwback Animated Short Viewed By Millions

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