Panthers Leave Bally Sports and Move to Scripps Sports

[rmc523]

https://www.nhl.com/panthers/news/florida-panthers-scripps-sports-partner-on-multi-year-agreement-to-air-national-hockey-league-team-s-games

 

The Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers have signed a multi-year agreement with Scripps Sports to locally broadcast Panthers hockey free for residents of Miami/Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Fort Myers.

Specifically:

In Miami/Fort Lauderdale, all locally produced games will air on WSFL-TV, channel 39.

In West Palm Beach, all locally produced games will air on WHDT-TV, channel 9.

In Fort Myers, Scripps Sports will announce the broadcast channel in advance of next season.

Under this new agreement, The E.W. Scripps Company (NASDAQ: SSP) has the ability to televise all locally broadcast Panthers preseason, regular-season and round one games of the postseason with distribution on cable, satellite and over-the-air television, becoming the new home on television of Florida Panthers hockey. Financial terms will not be disclosed. The deal has obtained the necessary approvals from the National Hockey League.

“After back-to-back Stanley Cup Final appearances and celebrating 30 years of Panthers Hockey in South Florida, we could not be more excited about the future of our hockey team. Scripps’ distribution network and accessibility makes them the ideal partner to stream and carry Panthers content on and off the ice,” said Panthers President and CEO Matthew Caldwell. “Panthers content will be available for free over the air and we are thrilled about the new homes this will reach as we continue to grow our great sport.”

Scripps Sports and the Panthers will collaborate to launch a team-branded direct-to-consumer application with details to be announced prior to the 2024-2025 season. This direct-to-consumer application will be the destination for live streaming of all Scripps Sports-produced games throughout the team’s territory in South Florida. Additional details will follow.

 

That's one less team on Ballys now.  I guess they'll be launching an app too - not sure if streaming will be included if you have the cable version (like the current Ballys app), or if it's a standalone package.  It's also unclear if they'll replace the broadcasting team, or if they go with the team (I like their broadcasters).

[SirFishFan]

I love this.. throwback to the old times like around 20+ years ago when almost all the professional sports teams would show at least some of their games locally for free over the air tv.

Reminds me when Marlins games used to show on PaxTV. Was a nice option back then when your family couldn’t afford or just didn’t want to pay for cable. And now days nice to see the Panthers games shown locally for free in South FL. Hopefully that will help to grow the fan base even bigger coming off this Stanley Cup win!

Edited July 4 by SirFishFan

[rmc523]

On 7/4/2024 at 12:19 AM, SirFishFan said:

I love this.. throwback to the old times like around 20+ years ago when almost all the professional sports teams would show at least some of their games locally for free over the air tv.

Reminds me when Marlins games used to show on PaxTV. Was a nice option back then when your family couldn’t afford or just didn’t want to pay for cable. And now days nice to see the Panthers games shown locally for free in South FL. Hopefully that will help to grow the fan base even bigger coming off this Stanley Cup win!

They didn't disclose financials, but I'm curious how this deal compares to whatever they had on BSF.

 

On a different note, I don't know enough about various hockey players, signings, depth, etc., but we've had several players leave for other teams, and haven't done much in the way of adding players for next year (we've resigned a couple key guys)....hopefully we'll be as competitive next year.  It's very early in the offseason, though....I'm sure plenty of other things can happen between now and the new season.