Report: NHL revenue approximately $3.7 billion for 2013-14 season

The NHL is in the entertainment business, and for the 2013-14 season, business was good.

The league - enjoying a full season after the 2012-13 campaign was shortened by a lockout - hosted six outdoor games this season, expanded its media offerings with the "24/7" series, enjoyed a boost in the international visibility of the sport thanks to the Olympics, and finished things off with one of the more exciting Stanley Cup playoffs in recent memory. 

It also helps that the Stanley Cup Final is being contested by two clubs in major media markets, and that both Conference Finals series were played by four of the bigger revenue teams.

With the season nearly at an end, Chris Botta of the Sports Business Journal reports that the league's approximate revenue haul for the 2013-14 season is $3.7 billion. 

Based on the league's long-standing $69-70 million salary cap projection (the salary cap is tied to hockey-related revenues), we'd basically known that the NHL's projected revenue for this league year would come in somewhere around $3.6 billion on the low-end. 

Obviously, the reported $3.7 billion figure is on the higher end of what was reasonably assumed, and if Botta's reporting is correct is seems likely that the upper limit of the 2014-15 salary cap will exceed $70 million by $500,000 or so.

With revenue generated by the landmark $5.2 billion Canadian television rights deal kicking in next season, the salary cap - and league revenues - are due to explode in the not-too-distant future.