NHL returns to ESPN
7-year deal announced
When Jimmy Pitaro became ESPN’s chairman three years ago, one of the first long-term goals he gave to his staff was trying to regain the National Hockey League rights when they became available again.
On Wednesday, Pitaro was able to check that one off his list. The NHL and ESPN are together again after announcing a seven-year agreement that also includes extensive streaming rights.
“This is a transformative time in media, especially sports media. It puts us on the cutting edge of content distribution with a great linear package as well as a forward-looking strategy, focusing on the impact of streaming,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. “This is a win, win, win. A win for ESPN and The Walt Disney Company, a win for the NHL, and most importantly, a win for fans.”
ESPN has a long history with the league, stretching back to the network’s launch, but hasn’t aired games since 2004. Bettman said discussions with ESPN began to intensify the last two months.
Under the new agreement, the Stanley Cup Final will air on ABC in four of the seven years, beginning next season. It also includes the AllStar game and 25 regularseason games, with the likely breakdown being 15 on ESPN and 10 on ABC. The ABC games likely would air on Saturdays beginning around the All-Star game, with the ESPN top game being on Thursday.
During the playoffs, ESPN and ABC also will have first choice of which conference final series to carry as well as half of the first- and second-round games.
The more significant part of the deal is the streaming component. ESPN will produce 75 national games per season that will stream exclusively on both ESPN+ and Hulu. The NHL.TV package — which has more than 1,000 out-of-market games — will move to ESPN+ and be a part of the base package.
Bettman said the deal gives the NHL the best of both worlds — a strong linear package and a forwardthinking digital strategy.
“This deal reflects the reality of what the media worlds looking like now. Everybody knows that cordcutting and streaming platforms are growing dramatically. This is an opportunity for our younger fans to give them what they want on the places where they go for content,” Bettman said.
Pitaro said the next step is evaluating announcers, analysts and studio talent. Steve Levy, who had a good first season calling “Monday Night Football,” and John Buccigross have ties to when ESPN did hockey and Barry Melrose still does analysis. Social media is also clamoring for the return of Gary Thorne, who was the network’s lead play-by-play voice from 1992-2004.
NBC is in the final season of a 10-year contract with the NHL worth $2 billion — including $250 million this season.
Disney will be paying a little over $2.8 billion over the next seven seasons (an average of $410 million per year). While the numbers show the average per year is more than double, one-fourth of that amount is for the digital rights Disney currently manages.