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The NHL’s “Hot for Hockey” audiobook campaign has been removed from Spotify less than a week after its launch and new episodes won’t be produced moving forward.
Inspired by popular hockey-themed romance novels, the league’s new marketing initiative enlisted hockey romance authors to turn real-life NHL news into 30-to-90 second audio stories told in the style of the genre. Seven installments featuring six players—Connor McDavid, Trevor Zegras, Sebastian Aho, Jack Eichel, Kyle Connor, and Mika Zibanejad—were released on Spotify as part of its debut last Tuesday.
The league told Front Office Sports on Monday that “Hot for Hockey” was meant to be a one-week-only campaign, tied to the first few games of the season.
“As a start of the season concept, these were matchup specific posts created by authentic authors, illustrators and voice actors designed to run during our opening games in the first week. Our marketing now is focused around many other activations including our Hockey Hits Different celebrity campaign, tune-in messages and other initiatives,” a spokesperson said.
A Sports Business Journal article announcing the initiative last week said the NHL planned to roll out short stories on audiobook platforms “throughout the season.” The league declined to answer why it took the episodes off the Spotify platform in their entirety.
The short-lived campaign, which didn’t describe any actual romance between players, but did lean into evocative language and dramatic production elements, debuted to widespread negative feedback on social media.
Fan reactions largely reflected general confusion and even concern for players’ privacy and safety. (The NHL told FOS that all players involved had consented to the use of their name and likeness; the NHLPA did not comment last week or in response to a follow-up inquiry Monday after the campaign came off Spotify.) As of late last week, the series was averaging 2.4 stars on Spotify, which does not disclose listenership.
“We have a number of marketing campaigns that we’re going to be using directed at various audiences,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said when asked about the “Hot for Hockey” campaign during the first week of the season. “But I will tell you the data is overwhelming in terms of new fans that we acquired last year who were first introduced to hockey either through Off Campus or Heated Rivalry … so since it seems to be a cultural phenomenon, we figured why not get on board.”
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