The Undisclosed Payment
Our investigation confirms that the deal hinges on an undisclosed payment of approximately 2 million USD to the NHL by Chemours to promote its trademarked Opteon brand of refrigerants, seemingly by primarily targeting community ice rinks across North America.
“We’re their partner, but we pay to be their partner.” - Derek Ramsay, Chemours
“So Chemours they pay us.” - Jason Jazayeri, NHL
“They pay us and then as a part of that, we generate business for them, right, to deploy their solutions to community rinks... So they’ve kind of mapped out if they pay us a couple million dollars, let’s say, they know they can get 5 times return based on a certain number of rinks they need to get business with.” - Jason Jazayeri, NHL
Investigator: “Why do you pay them the $2 million?”
“Yeah it’s pretty close to the number, I think there’s a few clauses in the contract give or take a dollar here and there...If you do form a partnership with them, they provide a great deal of services.” - Derek Ramsay, Chemours
A Marketing Deal Leveraging NHL’s Brand and Influence
The partnership is described as primarily a paid marketing deal, with Chemours paying NHL to leverage their association with the NHL and their brand. The agreement also grants Chemours exclusive rights to have Opteon be called the “official refrigerant of the NHL.”
“The bottom line is they are certainly looking for a financial obligation to be able to use their logo.” - Derek Ramsay, Chemours
Investigator: “So this partnership with Chemours, is that exclusive?”
“Yeah so they’re the official chemical refrigerant solution of the NHL.” - Jason Jazayeri, NHL
“We don’t have technically a need for supply. If anything it’s more of a marketing relationship.” - Jason Jazayeri, NHL
“It’s more of, again, just being able to market the fact that, hey, we the NHL prefer Chemours as a solution and them being able to use our marks, our marketing and IP, to promote the association. That carries weight with a lot of the community rinks. You can imagine, right, when you have the NHL shield attached to your business card or whatever it is that you’re using to promote the partnership, it goes a long way with these rinks.” - Jason Jazayeri, NHL
Deep Involvement of NHL’s Sustainability Team
Key NHL sustainability staff play a role in connecting Chemours with their network of NHL rinks and in public outreach in meetings, webinars, and other public forums to communities and industry.
“They have a whole sustainability and partnership team that really work for anybody that’s a partner with the NHL…. so for example the Vice President of Sustainability, Omar Mitchell is his name. So he specifically works with us on a regular basis where he’ll work with NHL rinks and NHL teams and provide, sort of, he’s a liaison between us and the teams and making introductions. Each team usually is affiliated with another network of rinks in the region. So he comes with us to trade shows, he’ll come with us to development discussions, so like when new buildings are being put in or skating rinks, he comes along and is sort of the official spokesman of the NHL on our behalf. He does speaking engagements, he’s done webinars for us. So they do provide I guess what I would [call], accessory support right there. It’s not just you pay them for the logo and they go away.” - Derek Ramsay, Chemours
Milestones and Financing to Convert Community Ice Rinks to Opteon
Specific funding milestones in the contract are focused on achieving conversion of a certain number of community ice rinks to Opteon refrigerants. Special financing solutions are offered for converting to Opteon.
“To be honest we’re probably more focused on the community rinks than the NHL clubs. Because there’s 4800 community rinks, so if Chemours wants to achieve scale and grow their business more substantially, they’re likely going to be able to do that through community rinks versus the 32 NHL arenas we have.” - Jason Jazayeri, NHL
“We just put in that we need a certain number of conversions to meet that target. If they don’t meet that, maybe we only pay $1.8 million. And if we got even more, there’s even kind of a step up.” - Derek Ramsay, Chemours
“We put in targets in our contract with them. We said we would like to get to certain milestones over the course of the contract and that’s where the NHL provides support and outreach via their people.” - Derek Ramsay, Chemours
“So we work with Chemours to talk to these rinks and help them maybe understand why it’s good for their business to switch out the refrigerant. We’ve developed financing solutions so that the companies that maybe don’t have capital to make that investment can do that.” - Jason Jazayeri, NHL
Influencing NHL Franchises to Adopt HFCs
NHL staff help persuade NHL franchise teams to convert to Chemours R513A refrigerant, in order to provide examples to community rinks; mentioning installations by the Colorado Avalanche and San Jose Sharks. Derek Ramsay from Chemours also claims the NHL changed its official rink specifications so that R513A would fit within its guidelines.
“What they really focused on with the NHL rinks is to get one or two examples where they’re serving that arena and now they can point to it when they’re talking to a community rink and they can say, were actually supplying the Colorado Avalanche...and it has a lot of equity with the community rinks when they promote that.” - Jason Jazayeri, NHL
“The NHL was very helpful in modifying their specifications for NHL rinks to include us. We had sort of not been in the scope, but now going forward our Opteon is one of the specified refrigerants that you can put in for a bid to be in the [system].” - Derek Ramsay, Chemours
Paying for an “Independent” Engineering Consultant to Promote Chemours
As part of the deal, the NHL pays an engineering consultant, Ian Storey, who apparently “acts as an advocate on behalf of Chemours”. To the public and potential clients, Ian’s company I.B. Storey Inc. is presented as an independent consultant and endorsed as the “official engineering consultant of the NHL” without disclosing any connection to Chemours. Storey is described as having previously worked with ammonia systems, but having “pivoted” to work with partners having more resources.
“Ian is the official engineering consultant of the NHL.” - Derek Ramsay, Chemours
“We pay out some fees for Ian. He has some costs that we pay and he kind of acts as an advocate on behalf of Chemours.” - Jason Jazayeri
“Ian also built ammonia systems for many years, but now he sees the value of the NHL and he sees the value of working with partners like us who have a lot of resources, so he’s kind of pivoted I would say.” - Derek Ramsay, Chemours
Replacing Zero-GWP Ammonia with HFCs
Chemours refrigerants are replacing ammonia systems, described in relation to the success of the partnership activities. Ammonia is acknowledged as the main competitor for Chemours products, but NHL representative Jason Jazayeri claims uncertainty with regard to which refrigerant is more environmentally sustainable.
“We’re taking out a lot of ammonia systems in North America and putting in our systems…so if an ammonia system was installed in 1996 for example and its at its end of life, a lot of people are looking for options what to do with their new system and we’re putting in double digits of new systems.” - Derek Ramsey, Chemours
“To be honest, ammonia is probably the biggest competitor to Chemours. It’s usually them or ammonia. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why, you know, rinks would opt for ammonia over Opteon. One I’m assuming is it maybe is a little cheaper…. To be honest, I don’t know which one is cleaner than the other.” - Jason Jazayeri, NHL
Gaining Trust to Expand HFCs into New Industries
Chemours has decided to extend its marketing agreement with NHL for a longer time period. It is not known if additional payment to NHL above the original $2million is included in this extension.
“Every year we’re gaining more business and now we’re kind of branching out with the NHL into industrial refrigeration, which is even bigger applications and sells more refrigerant. And to me, what it is, everywhere you go, you create relationships with the people who are doing it in that region and once you create those relationships, they foster and they grow. So once you’re putting in a big food processing chiller, they think about Opteon now and they think about Chemours...It just kind of keeps people front of mind that we’re out there to work on bigger projects. Everybody knows you like to work with people that you know and trust. That’s kind of what’s happening here.” - Derek Ramsay, Chemours
The Deal Has Been Extended “Long-term”
Derek Ramsay confirms that Chemours has decided to extend its marketing agreement with NHL for a longer time period. It is not known if additional payment to NHL above the original $2million is included in this extension.
“We’ve been in the partnership with the NHL now for three plus years and we’ve extended our relationship long term, so I would say you know, we are very motivated to expand this outside of North America.” - Derek Ramsay, Chemours