The Montreal Canadiens begin their 2022-2023 season at the Bell Center with many new players and a brand new one artificial intelligence (IA). Its job is to “eat” the tapes… literally, since it’s a technology that allows modifying the advertising messages visible on TV during the game.

For this new season, the Canadian has equipped himself with an AI to display more visible and larger advertising on the strip of his rink. However, they are only visible to viewers as it is a display technology that digitally replaces the advertising that exists in the real world.

With the main camera capturing the action, you can watch between three and five static commercials simultaneously on TV throughout the game in a 30-second rotation. This is less than the 24 ads we typically see on the rink at one time, but their rotation still creates more ad space per 60 minutes.

An announcer can also take complete control of the tape to create what the CH and National Hockey League teams call a “dominance effect”. One can imagine, for example, that Ford, one of the Canadian’s main advertising partners, takes control of the strip to operate its pickup trucks at the start of a power play.

The equivalent of 30 income matches for CH

The Canadiens and NHL call this technology DED, for ” digitally enhanced dashboards or, to translate it, “digital bands”. The main camera is used for about 80% of a game’s airtime. We will see the classic commercials that stick on the tapes the rest of the time when other cameras are used by the broadcaster.

This technology will be seen on both RDS and TVA Sports, both of which will be broadcasting Canadian games in French this season. Because one partner is CH and the other is NHL, advertisers may vary from game to game.

Most importantly, this new technology will allow the Canadian to sell his own advertising when the team plays abroad. “We just won commercials in 30 foreign matches that are broadcast on RDS,” he said Have to Hubert Richard, senior vice president of corporate sales for the Montreal Canadiens. On air from its broadcast partner, the team will be able to overlay its own commercials with those of the receiving team.

Previously, viewers in Quebec saw the advertisements pasted onto the tapes by the team hosting the CH. Now he’s seeing ads from the Montreal team’s advertising partners. The NHL will be able to do the same with TVA Sports, which owns the rights to the remaining CH games abroad.

It will be the same for all teams in the league as these digital tapes are used everywhere.

More ads, less ads

Fans who had already grumbled about the new advertising on ice hockey helmets and jerseys could once again find cause for complaint.

The NHL also reports that these new digital promo strips are 4 to 8 times larger than the static strips. However, she assures that two-thirds of the amateurs surveyed about this technology consider it to be of high quality and apparently have a positive opinion of it. The advertising messages displayed with DED technology are also more spatial and clear.

The Canadian doesn’t think this new advertising technology will plague Quebec hockey fans. Hubert Richard recalls that the NHL has not yet reached the advertising saturation level of other professional sports leagues on television or on the ice.

To see in the video