NHL strikes local broadcast deal with Charter for four teams

The NHL has negotiated direct-to-distributor deals for four of its teams that were left without local media rights agreements this upcoming season following the collapse of Main Street Sports Group, the now-defunct owner of the FanDuel Sports Networks.

According to a report by Alex Silverman in Sports Business Journal, the NHL has negotiated multiyear linear distribution deals with Charter’s Spectrum cable TV service for the Columbus Blue Jackets, Carolina Hurricanes, Minnesota Wild, and St. Louis Blues. The deal guarantees that the four teams will have some level of traditional linear television presence in addition to their paid streaming offerings via Amazon’s Prime Video.

Spectrum is the largest cable provider in the St. Louis, Columbus, and Raleigh markets, while it is a secondary player to Comcast’s Xfinity in the Twin Cities. The NHL is reportedly still in negotiations with additional pay-TV distributors in these markets.

The agreements mark some of the first local television deals negotiated centrally by the NHL, rather than the teams themselves. It is a strategy that MLB has utilized in a growing capacity for years, beginning with the San Diego Padres in 2023.

Unlike MLB, the NHL has no plans to create a centralized local broadcast platform to house most or all of its teams. Instead, the league is offering production support to teams that join its local media model, and will also negotiate streaming and television deals on behalf of the teams.

Rather than a fixed rights fee, as teams were accustomed to under the old regional sports network model, the direct-to-distributor deals will pay teams a per-subscriber fee similar to how other cable networks structure their agreements. Exact financial details about the deals were not disclosed.

In addition to the cable agreements with Spectrum, the Blue Jackets and Wild will also simulcast a select number of games on free, over-the-air broadcast networks. The Blues are currently pursuing a similar agreement.

Other NHL teams, like the Dallas Stars and Anaheim Ducks, have instead taken a different approach, although they are also using the NHL’s in-house model. The Stars and Ducks have opted to place local broadcasts exclusively on Prime Video, rather than pursuing a hybrid model that features games on pay-TV. Those teams will also air select games on over-the-air networks.

“We’re trying to create as many options as possible and let the clubs prioritize because they prioritize differently,” NHL media executive David Proper told SBJ.