CHL Partners With Network Foundation Technologies for 2008-09 Season

"Last season was a revolutionary year for the CHL providing fans free internet broadcasts," said Duane Lewis, CHL Commissioner.  "We were very fortunate to showcase the outstanding talent and product that we can present on the ice and were very pleased with the number of fans that tuned in."

Broadcasts will begin with the league's opening night on Friday, October 17th and will continue through the Ray Miron President's Cup Finals. The 2009 CHL All-Star Game from Loveland, Colorado (hosted by the Colorado Eagles) will also be available for internet view through the CHL Network.

The CHL Network provides world-wide access to all CHL regular season and playoff games at no cost to the viewer. Fans are able to view the entire game with the choice of listening to either the home or away radio announcer. A complete CHL schedule of game is available at centralhockeyleague.com.

More than 500,000 fans took advantage of watching their favorite CHL team last season at no charge.

"CHL's online audience numbers with NFT's FREE-For-View model are now 40 times higher than they were when using Pay-Per-View," said Dr. Mike O'Neal, Founder and Chief Scientist of NFT.  "For the 2008-2009 seasons we will be rolling out a whole new version of the CHL Network player. This new version of CHL Network supports a bit rate twice as high as was used last season, and as a result picture quality will be substantially improved over last season -- especially in full-screen mode. The fans are 'pumped' and we have no doubt that the league's audience -- both in and out of the stadium -- will continue to grow steadily".