NeuLion Skates Away With NHL Video Deal

National Hockey League fans will be able to watch their favorite team live on the Internet this year thanks to an agreement with NeuLion, a Plainview, N.Y.-based audio-video service provider.

NeuLion, founded in 2004, developed its proprietary IPTV (Internet protocol television) technology which features better encoding and transcoding capabilities than competing video technology, said Chris Wagner, NeuLion executive vice president of marketplace strategy.

The company won the lucrative NHL deal over more heralded competitors by striking smaller deals first with the New York Islanders at the beginning of the 2006-2007 season, and with the New York Rangers in the middle of the season.

Wagner said NeuLion's picture quality, Internet reach and lower bandwidth requirements (as low as 300Kbps) won the deal with the NHL.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that NeuLion's CEO, Nancy Li, is married to the owner of the New York Islanders, Charles Wang. Wagner insists that the Li-Wang relationship did not impact NeuLion's chances of winning the vote of 29 other NHL owners.

"The success of the Islanders and Rangers was profound,"Wagner said. "They got e-mails from fans that it was incredible. The NHL liked working with us. At the time, they were using some other service providers."

"We launched the Rangers with on-demand playoff [coverage]. They had 41,000 hours of [requests] in the first four hours that it was up and running," Wagner said. Executives from the NHL could not be reached for comment.

NeuLion was founded with the goal of becoming a "next-generation cable company," Wagner said. "We can do end-to-end service - all the video compression, billing, subscriber management."

The service provider currently broadcasts several networks over the Internet based on international and faith-based interests. It hopes to expand its commercial reach with more sports organizations, including professional, college and high-school levels, Wagner said.

It's also planning to offer the technology for other service providers and solution providers, he said. "We're starting to build a partner organization. A lot of companies have done very well in the sports media market. We're actively looking for [partners in] that market," he said.

NeuLion's IPTV technology is not available on mobile devices, but that is in the roadmap, Gardner said. "The experience we got last year was for more video on-demand experiences. This year we're launching with live games. The next phase is to go multi-platform," he said.

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