Gary Bettman quietly lining own pockets with NHL profits

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman's salary has just come to light and there are many questions about it.

There is little doubt that Gary Bettman is among the least popular figures in all of North American Sports. He is consistently booed at every public event he does from the draft to the Stanley Cup finals. In fact, he's even leaned into it, accepting the boos rather than actually trying to improve the league.

Booing the commissioner has become a tradition for fans across the league as every fanbase universally accepts that he has not done a good job growing the league, as the NBA has passed the NHL in all relevant ways. Now, even MLS is starting to become competitive while the NHL's growth remains slow, at best.

As such, one would expect Bettman to be earning less than the other league commissioners. Is that really the case though? According to CNBC reporter Ian Thomas, Bettman made just under 10 million dollars during the 2013-14 season. In each of the two preceding seasons, he received 8.8 and 8 million dollars respectively, representing a raise of about 10% per year. This is the most recent data we have available as Bettman seems to be very proficient at hiding his salary from the public. However, assuming the 10% trend continues, we would expect Bettman to be making roughly 25.7 million dollars per season. However, SportsSkeeda.com reports that Bettman is still making just 9.5 million dollars per season, as of 2023. For reference, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred made 17.5 million dollars last season, and NFL Commissioner Rodger Goodell made just under 64 million. Only NBA commissioner Adam Silver made a similar amount, also around 10 million dollars.

This makes sense as the NBA is the closest league to the NHL in terms of overall value. However, we can see from this trend that Bettman's salary actually has not been increasing over time. It seems as though he has avoided giving himself a raise due to the slow nature of the growth of the sport. Perhaps if he was better at his job, he would personally be better off while the sport as a whole would be better off as well.

Source: HabsFanatics Gary Bettman's annual salary has been leaked, and it's worse than expected

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