The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan will mark the first time in 12 years that NHL players will return to the Games, something NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is expecting to have a big effect on the league.

“Ultimately, in terms of balancing the pros and cons, we decided it was important to go back and be on what is one of the most visible platforms in the world,” Bettman said at CNBC Sport and Boardroom’s Game Plan conference in Santa Monica, California, on Tuesday.

Prior to Bettman being named commissioner in 1993, NHL players had not participated in the Olympics. After seeing firsthand the effect that Olympic player participation had on the NBA, Bettman said, the league and the NHL Players’ Association worked to have the players participate starting in 1998.

But that participation stopped after the 2014 Sochi Games, which Bettman said was a reflection of the evolution of the business of the league and the sports industry in general.

“It was a bit of a mixed bag,” Bettman said of the NHL’s participation in the Olympics. “Even though we were shut down for two weeks, our players were treated like invited guests,” he said, adding that the league and its teams “had no control over anything; we didn’t have the rights to promote ourselves.”

There were also competition challenges as well, given the number of players some teams were sending.

Part of what drove the NHL back to the Olympic ice was a shift in that relationship. The NHL and NHLPA’s new deal with the IOC changes some aspects of their commercial arrangement and also upgrades the players’ living conditions while at the Games.

But Bettman also noted it came down to the desire from the players to play best-on-best at a national level, something that was highlighted in the league’s successful 4 Nations Face-Off tournament earlier this year.

“It became clear to me that it was important to our players, who have a history and tradition of representing their countries,” he said.

The NHL will stop play for nearly two weeks this season, and Bettman said Olympic participation “won’t be without its difficulties.” The NHL has not yet formally guaranteed its players will participate in the 2030 Games.

“But on balance, it should be worth it,” he said.

Disclosure: CNBC parent NBCUniversal owns NBC Sports and NBC Olympics. NBC Olympics is the U.S. broadcast rights holder to all Summer and Winter Games through 2036.

Over the last decade, private equity investor Josh Harris has built one of the largest conglomerates in sports.

Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which he co-founded with Blackstone executive David Blitzer in 2017, owns majority stakes across many of the most valuable sports leagues in the world. That includes stakes in the NFL’s Washington Commanders, the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, the NHL’s New Jersey Devils and the Premier League’s Crystal Palace. Earlier this year, the group paid a $250 million franchise fee for a Philadelphia WNBA expansion team, expected to begin play in 2030.

That has quickly made HBSE one of the most valuable sports ownership groups in the world. In fact, it ranked third in CNBC’s 2025 Most Valuable Sports Empires list at a value of $14.58 billion.

But those continued rising valuations raise a question that harkens back to Harris’ time as a private equity executive: Will HBSE, or other sports teams and large ownership conglomerates, start to look toward going public?

“I don’t think so,” Harris told CNBC’s Scott Wapner at CNBC Sport and Boardroom’s Game Plan conference in Santa Monica, California, on Tuesday.

“When you think about IPOs and sports assets being public so far, they’ve been valued more highly as private assets,” Harris said. “You haven’t seen the public valuations exceed the private valuations; therefore, people have tended to keep them private.”

Madison Square Garden’s sports assets, which include the New York Knicks and Rangers, are among the only U.S. sports teams to be owned by public companies.

Harris said that if you look at those instances, “they generally trade below their intrinsic value, and they haven’t been embraced as much as we would like.”

One big consideration has kept most clubs off the public markets, Harris said.

“People have tended to keep them private because ultimately as someone who is running a team, you want to be able to spend to win,” he said. “You want to be able to take a very long-term perspective, and the public markets haven’t always embraced that.”

Harris notched a massive win for the Commanders this year, striking a $3.7 billion deal to relocate the team from its current stadium in Landover, Maryland, to Washington, D.C., on the grounds of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.

“We’re not going to see the profits from that for years and years later,” he said.

Most teams, especially in the NFL, are intergenerational assets, and leagues have opened up new ways to raise money. Last year the league voted to approve select private equity firms to take minority stakes in NFL franchises.

Harris said that approach has been positive so far.

“Many of the funds are long-date funds, and they don’t have the typical things that private equity usually has, like control,” he said. “That allows for owners such as myself to think very long term, … They know over the long run they’re betting on the city, the fan support and the league growth.”