Adobe and NHL use AI to reach hockey fans worldwide on a personal level

Adobe and the National Hockey League (NHL) have entered into a multi-year partnership in which Adobe takes on the role of official partner for creativity, marketing and AI. The collaboration, announced in late September 2026 ahead of the 2026–2027 season, covers the NHL itself and all 32 of its clubs.

The aim is to serve the more than 200 million fans the NHL counts across 147 countries in a more personalised way through digital channels. That means personalised content on NHL.com, the mobile app, social media, email and within arenas. The financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed.

The NHL is growing rapidly outside North America. Its 18-to-34-year-old viewing audience rose 30 percent following the Winter Games, and approximately 1.8 million people tuned in to the NHL for the first time following the success of hockey-centric TV dramas. That broader, international audience demands content in multiple languages and across a variety of platforms, and that is precisely what the partnership targets.

Which Adobe tools the NHL is deploying

The NHL gains access to the Adobe CX Enterprise suite, a combination of tools for content production, customer data and campaign orchestration. Central to this is Adobe GenStudio, the platform that enables teams to produce and adapt content more quickly for different markets and languages without losing sight of brand standards.

The NHL will also work with Adobe Experience Platform, which provides real-time insight into what fans want and how they behave across different channels. Based on that data, Adobe Journey Optimizer determines which message a fan receives, on which channel and at what moment. Adobe Brand Concierge and Adobe Brand Visibility are also part of the partnership.

Looking further ahead, the NHL is exploring Adobe Express and Adobe Firefly. These tools could enable fans themselves to create and share hockey-themed content, such as personalised graphics for social media. This has been presented as a potential application for now, not as a feature already rolled out as part of the partnership.

What this signals about AI in customer experience

The partnership illustrates how the use of AI in marketing is shifting. Generative AI is no longer deployed solely for individual campaigns, but as a shared layer connecting content creation, customer data and distribution. In the industry, this is referred to as customer experience orchestration: the coordinated use of data, AI and content to deliver relevant interactions at the right moment.

For Adobe, the collaboration with the NHL serves as a large-scale real-world test for exactly that approach. It involves an organisation with a global, diverse audience, major seasonal peaks around events such as the Stanley Cup Playoffs and the NHL Global Series, and a growing need for localised content. More than 20,000 brands already use Adobe solutions for customer experience orchestration, but a sports organisation of this scale adds a visible and measurable case study.

Adobe posted revenue of $6.76 billion in the fiscal third quarter ending 28 August 2026, a 13 percent increase year on year. The company is positioning its CX Enterprise portfolio explicitly as a response to demand for integrated AI applications in marketing and creativity.

What it means for those building or investing in AI

For developers and companies building AI applications for marketing and customer experience, this deal illustrates where the market is heading. The added value lies not in a standalone AI model, but in the integration of content production, real-time customer data and automated distribution within a single platform. Organisations that attempt to build this piecemeal with separate tools run into the complexity of that integration.

For investors, the partnership confirms that major sports organisations are becoming serious buyers of enterprise AI platforms, a segment that until now has been dominated primarily by financial institutions, retailers and telecoms companies. The combination of a global fan base, rich behavioural data and high content volumes makes the sports sector an attractive testing ground for integrated AI applications.