IIHF agreements and arena inspections: summary of the meeting with club dir
On Thursday, KHL President Alexei Morozov held his traditional December meeting with the directors of the clubs. This year, for the first time, the meeting took place online.
The 2020-2021 season
Prior to the current international break, 417 games were played. That represents 60% of the championship schedule. A total of 29 scheduled games were unable to go ahead as planned. Six of those were forfeited and the remainder were rearranged.
This is only possible thanks to the joint efforts of the league and the clubs, and also the support of government organizations. In conjunction with the authorities we have implemented systems to facilitate border crossings, organize visas and enable foreign players to bring their families with them to Russia.
The KHL wishes to the thanks the Ministry of Sport, the Russian government and other state organizations that have helped to resolve these challenges.
The 2021-2022 schedule
At the end of December, the KHL will send information to all clubs about the planned international breaks for next season. This will help arena managers to plan possible events in those periods. From the start of the New Year, the league will begin collating information about the schedules of each arena to start preparations for next year’s schedule.
COVID-19
The situation at Dec. 16 was as follows: about 74,000 tests had been carried out, of which 64,000 were PCR tests and the remainder were IgG + IgA. In total, in the KHL, JHL and Women’s Hockey League, 1,251 people (players and club staff) returned positive tests.
We surveyed all the members of these three leagues to find out how effective the testing service was. Based on the results, the laboratory recruited additional staff to work on the KHL’s testing requirements.
The League continues to work on preventing the spread of COVID-19 , to ensure the health of everyone involved in our competitions and to keep the championship on the ice.
Anti-doping
The KHL is the only professional Russian sports league that carries out its own, independent anti-doping program. Once again, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the IIHF for the current season. From September to November 2020, 92 tests were carried out in partnership with the IIHF.
The league continues to roll out the KHL anti-doping program. All players have successfully completed an online course about the issue and there is a greater level of anti-doping knowledge and understanding.
Arena inspections
Starting from this season, we are resuming annual inspections of all arenas used to stage games in the KHL, JHL and Women’s Hockey League. These visits will ensure that all venues meet the technical standards and offer the opportunity for expert guidance into the lighting of hockey arenas. Prior to the start of the 2020/2021 season, all arenas in all three leagues were inspected.
In order to ensure compliance with the leagues’ regulations and the instructions of the inspectors, follow-up inspections have been conducted in person during the season.
The unified database of KHL fans
The project’s main aim is to enhance the commercial success of our clubs and the league by collecting and using ‘big data’ about our fans.
In partnership with Ak Bars, Metallurg, Spartak and Dinamo Minsk, the project has collated more than 6 million contacts into one system. Subsequently, this has triggered more than 83 million interactions. The total increase in contacts represents more than 5 million fan profiles, and the clubs and the KHL have used this to conduct more than 400 campaigns and deliver almost 11 million emails.
The platform helps to increase income streams by simplifying communications with fans, automating various marketing processes and reducing costs and the risk of human error. The participating clubs saw their fanbase grow by 60%, enabling them to reach a wider audience and increase their sales.
All members of the league have free access to this system thanks to our partnership with SAP. At present, Avangard, Barys, Severstal and Vityaz are in the process of linking into the system with online ticket sales and other digital resources already connected.
‘Smart puck’ data
Since the start of last season, every KHL game has been covered by ‘smart puck’ technology – an automated data gathering system the harvests unique stats from chips embedded in pucks and players’ uniforms. We are continuing to develop this project in the current season. At present, 19 teams are making use of the additional data made available thanks to this system.
Following requests from clubs in the KHL, new features were added: a better shot map that can show the trajectory of individual shots, their speed, and the play leading up to the shot; the opportunity to see a video of each shift, reinforced with detailed statistics; telemetrics for each player’s shift (speed ranges, number of accelerations and decelerations, time and speed while in possession of the puck).
Hard salary cap
Not one club has breached the hard salary cap. This season, the gap between the biggest and smallest contracted salaries for players has dropped sharply: where once the best paid earned seven times more, now it is a fourfold increase. On average, clubs are spending 24% less on player salaries.
Where a player is unavailable to play due to COVID, his salary will not count under the cap.
