Billboards highlighting Penn State sports expand to hockey, star Gavin McKenna

Last year, the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau launched a name, image and likeness partnership with Penn State football, putting up billboards in areas like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The goal was to draw people from those places to State College by using the team’s most prolific athletes such as Abdul Carter, who was the No. 3 overall pick in this year’s NFL draft.

Although it’s hard to measure, the organization felt it had success with the project and quickly looked for new avenues to try. What better market to utilize than Penn State men’s hockey, which is a national championship favorite?

HVAB will put up digital billboards in downtown Toronto, Canada, this November as part of an NIL deal with projected No. 1 pick in the 2026 NHL Entry Draft and current freshman Gavin McKenna. The billboards will be up until early March, which would coincidentally be when Penn State would start a postseason run in the Big Ten Tournament. The design has not been finalized.

“This opportunity with hockey came about because Toronto, in the southern part of Ontario, is less than five hours from Happy Valley, and we do advertising in the Toronto area, typically every summer we do but we are seeing more and more Ontario license plates coming through this area, and rightfully so,” Dave Gerdes, the vice president of sales and marketing, told the Centre Daily Times. “Canadians love to get out and explore, and central PA and Happy Valley is very, very close to them, and they love the outdoors. And we have great outdoor assets.”

McKenna’s nationality also played a small role in HVAB’s billboard selection. The 17-year-old is from Yukon, Canada, about 3,200 miles from downtown Toronto. Regardless, he’s still set to be one of the country’s next stars, and there’s nowhere better to advertise him than in one of Canada’s biggest cities.

“We thought, ‘Wow, Gavin McKenna is bringing a lot of attention to our area, and certainly the Penn State hockey program with him just playing this year.’ It was completely out of the blue,” Gerdes said. “And we thought, ‘wow, is there a way that we can utilize that?’”

The decision to use McKenna for thes billboards was an easy one, as he’s set to be the star of college hockey this season before he goes on to be potentially the face of the NHL. But the deal isn’t just benefitting HVAB — McKenna is getting his name and face out to a market in his home country while also taking home some cash.

Getting McKenna on board wasn’t very difficult, as HVAB has “a really good relationship” with Penn State’s athletic department, according to Gerdes. All it took was reaching out to Morgyn Seigfried, the general manager of Playfly Sports for the university’s athletic program. Seigfried oversees NIL revenue for the Nittany Lions while also helping to secure partnerships for their athletes.

“It’s really hard to get directly to the athlete, because now you have to go through some other people and other departments,” Gerdes said. “It was knowing (Seigfried) and just reaching out to her and saying, ‘what are the opportunities?’ And then that’s where it begins. We have not had any direct contact with the athlete yet.”

Hockey is the fourth sport HVAB will be entering the NIL field with. The partnership with football will continue this year with billboards in similar areas to last year with the addition of Cleveland, Ohio.

But they’ve also done billboards for the men’s basketball program, and HVAB did a video series with five-time NCAA wrestling champion Carter Starocci last year to promote Happy Valley restaurants. The addition of McKenna to their billboard campaign is just another way Gerdes said the organization is thinking out of the box to utilize NIL.

“There are creative and strategic ways to utilize NIL to the benefit of everybody, and not just the athlete getting money,” Gerdes said. “You can use it as a business and be very strategic with it and use it to attract more customers or more opportunities. I would encourage others to do the same thing.”