The National Hockey League (NHL) has announced the debut of Digitally Enhanced Dasher Boards (DED), an advanced approach to dynamic dasher board advertising that will launch for the 2022-23 season.

The DED system allows for the digital replacement of camera-visible arena dasher boards within local, national, and international NHL game broadcasts, ushering in the next wave of innovation to create new opportunities for the League, its Clubs and their media and corporate partners.

The NHL has partnered with Supponor, a world leading technology provider focused on raising standards for innovative commercial strategies through digital signage, to develop the DED technology solution which uses remote, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based keying technology to program dasher board advertising during game broadcasts by placing dynamic graphics over the camera-visible arena dasher boards. DED graphics can be displayed during games in a market-specific way wherever the game feed is broadcast resulting in dynamic and targeted branding and promotional messaging that was not previously achievable.

The NHL’s DED solution will allow for never-before-seen dynamic dasher board branding and messaging featuring URLs, flighted marketing campaigns, co-branded official designations, social media integration, QR codes and more. Additionally, the DED display will be programmable into multiple formats from a single-advertiser full-dasherboard takeover to a split zone format with ten advertisers brands. Among other advantages, the DED system allows for the opportunity for Clubs to provide their corporate partners and advertisers with this valuable exposure in both their home and their away game broadcasts for the first time. Supponor will also manage the League’s Slot Virtual advertising beginning this season and has developed an NHL Content Management System for use by the League and its Clubs to manage their playlists for every game broadcast in their market.

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