The number of teams moving from the Diamond Sports-owned Bally Sports regional sports networks to a combination of broadcast television and streaming deals continues to grow.
The latest is the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks, who are moving on from Bally Sports SoCal. But their new deal has some interesting parts to it, specifically with the games being offered for free on streaming.
As per Eric Stephens of The Athletic, the Ducks will have their local games on Los Angeles channel 13, KCOP (branded as Fox 11 Plus). The broadcast team of play-by-play voice John Ahlers and analyst Brian Hayward is expected to return, as are contributors Kent French, Aly Lozoff, and Guy Hebert.
These broadcasts will also stream for free within the Ducks’ designated market area through A Parent Media Co. Inc.’s Victory+ service, with shoulder programming there as well, as Ducks’ president Aaron Teats told Stephens :
“I think this is going to be something that’s going to be appreciated by the community and specifically our fans, in that we can bring this to them however they want to consume our content and we can bring it to them free of charge,” Teats told The Athletic.
Teats said this change accomplishes the team’s goal of distributing content to the entire Los Angeles regional market, a vast area covering approximately 8 million households across numerous Southern California counties and Hawaii.
…“We need to prioritize distribution,” Teats said. “We need to prioritize the number of fans that will have access to watch our games. And I give Henry and Susan all the credit in the world for being able to prioritize the distribution in the market for all Ducks and all NHL fans.
“We found a great model to achieve maximum distribution, where 100 percent of the households in our DMA will have access to our games and at zero cost. And that is a huge step forward for our fan base and for our team and our brand. We’re real excited about seeing that first broadcast.”
As Joe Reedy of The Associated Press notes, the Ducks are the third NHL team to make this kind of move this offseason alone. They follow the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers (who went from Bally Sports Sun to Scripps Sports and their local affiliates, with a direct-to-consumer product to be announced) and the Dallas Stars (who left Bally Sports Southwest for Victory+ , where their broadcasts will also stream for free; they may land a broadcast deal as well).
Curiously enough, this comes just a week after Bally had supposedly reached deals with 13 NBA teams and nine NHL teams for this season, including the Ducks. The discrepancy may be that Teats told Stephens they’d continued to negotiate with Bally even after their contract expired following last season before ultimately deciding to go this way. So that approval (which included league signoff from the NHL) in their particular case may have been a fallback plan if this deal didn’t come through.
The overall picture here remains how far these RSNs have fallen. Sinclair (and partners) bought the then-21 RSNs from Disney in 2019 for $10.6 billion, which is much less than the $20-22 billion (including YES, which was sold separately for $3.5 billion) they were initially estimated as worth when Disney bought them from Fox as part of a larger deal finalized earlier that year. (Disney was forced to sell the RSNs as part of a settlement with the Department of Justice to get the larger deal approved .)
But a combination of a variety of factors soon reduced that value further. Those included Sinclair’s limited funds, their struggles launching an oft-delayed and then-bashed over-the-top app, and the COVID-19 pandemic. That all led to Sinclair looking for bids for around $3 billion in 2022, proving unsuccessful with that, and then filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2023.
That bankruptcy process is still ongoing, but it’s seen that ownership transferred from Sinclair to creditors (around various further feuds and litigation), and these RSNs’ overall future is very much in doubt (including after Amazon’s withdrawal of their $115 million offer to help fund the company this week).
For Bally Sports SoCal in particular, they’re now left with just the Los Angeles Clippers (who already have their own alternative streaming product) and the West Coast Conference, so their future is definitely in doubt too. But for the overall company, the Ducks are just the latest team to leave, and they probably won’t be the last.
[ The Athletic , The Associated Press ]
The post Anaheim Ducks leaving Bally Sports partnership for free digital service appeared first on Awful Announcing .
Most Popular
Comments / 0