Gary Bettman Siblings: Meet Jeffrey Pollack

Gary Bettman Siblings: Meet Jeffrey Pollack: Gary Bettman, officially known as Gary Bruce Bettman is an American sports executive born on June 2, 1952.

He studied industrial and labor relations at Cornell University in Ithaca, as well as a graduate of New York University School of Law.

Gary Bettman serves as the commissioner of the National Hockey League (NHL), a post he has held since February 1, 1993.

Previously, Bettman was a senior vice president and general counsel to the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Under Bettman, the NHL has seen rapid growth in league revenues, from $400 million when he was hired to over $3 billion in 2010–11.

He has often been criticized for attempting to give the game a mass appeal, and for expanding the league into non-traditional hockey markets such as the Sun Belt at the expense of the more traditional markets in Canada and the Northern United States

Bettman has also been a central figure of three labor stoppages, including the 2004–05 NHL lockout that saw the entire season canceled. These controversies have made him unpopular with many fans around the league.

In May 2014, Bettman was named “sports executive of the year” by the SportsBusiness Journal and SportsBusiness Daily

In 2016, Bettman was inducted as a member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. He was also elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018.

He oversaw the expansion of the NHL’s footprint across the United States, with eight new teams added during his tenure, bringing the NHL to 32 teams as of the start of the 2021–22 season.