At a time where sports media outlets of all forms are struggling to make ends meet, the ice hockey platform Elite Prospects continues to find innovative ways to broaden its reach as it celebrates its 25th anniversary.
Swedish university student Johan Nilsson launched Elite Prospects out of his dorm room in 1999 — about the same time that Napster first appeared on the scene and upended the music industry.
Since then, the portal has grown and evolved while serving its mission as a ‘gateway to hockey.’ Now averaging around 5 million unique visitors per month, according to company data, the site recently hit an all-time one-week traffic record of 1.73 million unique visitors during the final week of the 2024 World Junior Championship, held in Gothenburg, Sweden from Dec. 26 - Jan. 5,
“One thing that was super fun was that, for the first time, we were partnering with the tournament as well,” said Hannes Anderson, the CEO of Elite Prospects’ parent company, Everysport Group. “Being in Sweden, Gothenburg, a great hockey town, and being the Official Career Partner of it was great.”
In many ways, the record-setting week was a full-circle moment. In the early days, Nilsson used Elite Prospects as a platform to post editorial profiles of up-and-coming European players for a global audience, in English. It’s fitting that the record would come with the eyes of the hockey world on Sweden, during the most important annual event for future NHL stars.
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Today, the site’s statistical database has grown to nearly 1.1 million players worldwide. Like a hockey version of IMDB, each player listing includes a year-by-year statistical breakdown. Elite Prospects goes deeper than other sports databases, with the inclusion of stats from European leagues and international events, lists of awards and trophies won, and family tree information that links players to their parents, children, siblings, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews who have also played a role in the game.
For example, if you search Macklin Celebrini, the No. 1 North American-based skater for the 2024 draft, you’ll find his vital statistics, a list of his rankings by various draft experts (unanimously No. 1), his game stats going back to his first U14 season with the San Jose Jr. Sharks in 2019-20 and tournament stats that go back even farther, including the famed Brick Invitational Tournament for 10-year-olds and the Quebec International Pee-Wee Tournament for U-12 players.
This year’s top-ranked European skater is Finland’s Konsta Helenius. His profile includes his overall draft rankings, which range from No. 3 to 13, along with his family tree and his stats going back to his U16 year in 2020-21.
True to its name, Elite Prospects features more detail on the early part of players’ careers than any other site. It now hosts profiles for North American players starting at the bantam level (age 13) and for Europeans starting at 15.
“Elite Prospects, over the last few years, has morphed into sort of a LinkedIn for young hockey players,” said Peter Sibner, the President of ESMG America. “For scouts and GMs, if you look at the the CHL teams or the USHL teams or the college teams, they all use Elite Prospects as a professional tool to scout and keep track of future talent. So it is an important career tool for young hockey players looking to get to the next step.”
That’s where the World Juniors ‘Career Partner’ positioning comes in.
“We figured that the setting and the audience and the type of demographics that watches a tournament like that is definitely the right type of target group to promote Elite Prospects,” Sibner said. “Not just as a statistical database, but the fact that we are actually a very important career tool for young hockey players and professional hockey staffers.”
A new feature now allows players to verify their profiles for free. With a premium subscription, they can also access enhanced features.
It’s a seismic leap forward from the platform’s humble roots.
Sweden’s Everysport Media Group acquired Elite Prospects from Nilsson in 2007, and he remains with the company. Striving to monetize the platform via web traffic, the site’s database continued to grow. Sibner came on board about a decade ago, and when The Athletic started building momentum with its sports media subscription model around 2017, Elite Prospects took notice.
“That’s when we set out to create our own suite of premium features, which is now EP Premium,” Sibner said. Available by monthly or annual subscription, some notable features of the premium suite include ad-free browsing, a player comparison tool, game logs for more than 70 leagues and access to Elite Prospects’ comprehensive draft guide.
Now with 20,000 active subscriptions, players remain the most important revenue driver.
“For actual subscription conversion, I will say that the active player community is probably the number one growth factor right now,” Sibner said. “Ever since we released the the player-centric features four years ago, that has been the largest driver of growth. So it accounts for more than 50% of our subscribers right now.”
Elite Prospects has also partnered with hockey organizations around the world. They’re an official career partner of the Swedish Hockey League and an official data partner of the NHL.
Most NHL teams also use the company’s data, but Andersson emphasizes that the consumer aspect of Elite Prospects’ business is what’s currently driving the company’s growth.
“The B2C subscription part is definitely the fastest growing, and it didn’t exist at all five years ago,” he said.
While the player tools have been a game-changer, the next steps for Elite Prospects will be to continue to broaden their reach of services across the global hockey spectrum.
The company’s EP Rinkside portal of editorial content is currently available as a standalone subscription or as part of the premium package. Ever-growing, its staff writers cover the NHL, European leagues, draft prospects and fantasy hockey.
An Elite Prospects mobile app is also in the works, which will offer users more customized tools for their specific needs, including push notifications.
And what’s a web portal these days without a place to shop?
“We definitely have a marketplace component on the drawing board as well,” said Anderson. “Obviously our visitors are attractive consumers to the companies advertising at Elite Prospects, but we also know that they are big consumers in the actual hockey industry.”
