NHL

Nearly 40 advertisers jump over the boards onto the ice.

The agreement, which was contained in a court filing made Wednesday, is subject to court approval. Diamond Sports has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the Southern District of Texas since it filed for protection in March. The company said in a financial filing last year that it had debt of $8.67 billion.

The reigning NHL Stanley Cup champions are drawing an average 8.5 household rating in Las Vegas, according to Comscore data supplied by Scripps.

With live sports TV programming taking on more importance with TV advertisers, Walt Disney says its upcoming NHL season on all its TV networks and streaming platforms is “nearly sold out,” inking 26 deals for presenting sponsorships. Disney Advertising was to get five new sponsorships: Chewy, GoDaddy, Kohl’s, Procter & Gamble and T. Rowe Price. This adds to the list of 21 presenting sponsorship brands from American Express, Apple, Mercedes-Benz USA, Taco Bell, Verizon, Fidelity and Kohl’s among others.

Scripps will televise all locally broadcast Coyotes games over the air to residents of Arizona and surrounding states within the team’s broadcast territory.

Bankrupt broadcaster Diamond Sports, the nation’s largest regional sports network, has made a take-it-or-leave-it offer to cut rights fees to the NHL and NBA in a last-ditch bid to avoid liquidation. Diamond proposed cutting the fees to both leagues by up to 20% ahead of a bankruptcy court-imposed Sept. 30 deadline, a source with direct knowledge of the situation said Thursday.

KCAL Los Angeles will air six Los Angeles Kings NHL games this season, while KDKA Plus in Pittsburgh, also part of CBS News and Stations, will broadcast two Pittsburgh Penguins preseason hockey games. Bally Sports West will produce the Kings telecasts on KCAL. Kings games were on KCAL, then known as KHJ, from 1967 to 1985, and in 1998-99.

The ecosystem, held together by the pay TV bundle, is showing wear and tear — like the MLB taking over a bankrupt network — as teams and programmers game out what’s next.

ESPN dropped the puck Tuesday on its 2022 National Hockey League regular season schedule, its second campaign as part of a seven-year deal with the league signed in 2021. The network’s 103 NHL games will feature more linear TV exposure for the league on ESPN and ABC, as well as less overlap of games throughout the season, according to ESPN officials. The sports network will look to improve on the 616,000 viewers it averaged last season for live NHL regular-season telecasts on ESPN and ABC.

Sinclair today has begun taking orders for its Bally Sports+ cord-cutter app in all 19 Bally markets with NBA and NHL teams. However, as expected, MLB teams are available in only five of those markets.

MLB, the NBA and the NHL may orchestrate a buyout of the nation’s dominant owner of regional sports TV networks, whose shaky finances pose an increasing threat to their teams. The trio of pro-sports leagues are expected to soon begin talks with Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Diamond Sports, which operates 21 regional Bally Sports networks that account for more than half the local broadcast markets around the country, sources close to the situation say.

Disney said it has signed up 10 sponsors as the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Colorado Avalanche battle for the National Hockey League’s championship. There will also be 59 other advertisers in 35 categories appearing during the telecasts.

With Turner Sports and ESPN picking up the playoffs after 16 years, Turner hopes to continue the momentum from a successful regular season in the playoffs. Its games, mainly on Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons, averaged 361,000 viewers. That’s an increase of 29% over last year on NBCSN (280,000) and 24% compared with 2019-20 (292,000). Above: Wayne Gretzky takes a break during the pregame show on Oct. 13, 2021, in Atlanta. TNT and TBS are in their first season broadcasting the NHL and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. (Jeremy Freeman/Turner Sports via AP)

Saturday’s All-Star Game from Las Vegas will be on ABC, and marks the beginning of ESPN ramping up its coverage for the second half of the season. ESPN will have 11 games starting later this month, while ABC’s regular-season package of Saturday games begins on Feb. 26.

By all measures, sports advertising is dominating ads in all other types of programming, walloping the competition in primetime. All indications are it only has more to grow.

Rollowing a longer-than-usual holiday break, each team will be allowed to have a taxi squad of up to six players and to make emergency recalls from the minors if COVID-19 absences would cause anyone to play without a full lineup. Taxi squads, which were used during the shortened 2021 season, are set to be in effect until at least the All-Star break in early February.

Two people with direct knowledge of discussions told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the league informed the NHL Players’ Association it was exercising its right to withdraw from the Beijing Games because there was a material disruption to the season. The people spoke to The AP on condition of anonymity because an announcement had yet to be made. An announcement is expected today.

The NHL has postponed more games, becoming the first major American professional sports league to halt play entirely in the face of rising infections from the fast-spreading omicron coronavirus variant. The pro hockey league announced Monday night that the league’s holiday break, previously scheduled for Friday-Saturday, will start after the Tuesday games. All games slated for Wednesday have been postponed.

Sinclair Broadcast Group says it has signed a multi-year renewal of its carriage pact with the National Hockey League. The new agreement includes in-market and direct-to-consumer streaming rights of live games of 12 teams on Bally Sports. The 12 teams are: Anaheim Ducks, Arizona Coyotes, Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets, Dallas Stars, Detroit Red Wings, Florida Panthers, Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota Wild, Nashville Predators, St. Louis Blues and Tampa Bay Lightning.

Data generated by the pucks and from sensors about the size of a thumb on the backs of players will be used by teams to develop their players and to scout opponents. Passing, puck possession, takeaways, giveaways and more can be accurately recorded without the potential subjectivity of a scoring crew in an arena. Perhaps later this season, gamblers are expected to be able to wager on a new wave of bets. How far does the puck travel in a game? Who skates the fastest in the second period? Who has the hardest shot in the game? TV networks will continue to display and talk about some of the information on broadcasts and studio shows.

Fans of ESPN’s Monday Night Football might get something next week they won’t be expecting — a tribute to hockey. The Disney-backed sports-media giant expects to spend part of its next halftime show treating viewers to a concert as well as a surprise visit from someone who is emblematic of the icy pastime, says Mark Gross, senior vice president of production and remote events, in an interview. He declined to name the person likely to appear. The weekly football showcase “exposes a large audience to the NFL and a larger audience” to a new NHL schedule slated to start the very next night, says the executive.

The National Hockey League and the Walt Disney Company will drop the puck on the first season of its seven-year multiplatform television deal by distributing more 100 exclusive, live NHL regular season games, nearly three-quarters of which will be offered through digital services ESPN Plus and Hulu.

The league reached an agreement with the International Ice Hockey Federation to pause its schedule in February to allow skaters to represent their countries in Beijing.

ESPN will retake the ice for the first time since 2004 when it airs an NHL opening-night doubleheader in the fall. And the league’s other new TV partner, Turner Sports, also revealed its inaugural games on TNT. The league unveiled its 82-game 2021-22 regular-season schedule today

The National Hockey League has completed its next TV rights package — and for the first time in 16 years, NBC Sports won’t be a part of it. NBC pulled out of negotiations for the partial rights for the league’s next TV deal. WarnerMedia’s Turner Sports will pick up the remainder of the package, sharing rights with ESPN for seven seasons beginning with the 2021-22 seasonth.

Hockey will return in a big way to Walt Disney’s ESPN in a new seven-year deal that breaks NBCUniversal’s dominance of the sport’s TV rights and makes some National Hockey League games available for streaming in broader fashion. ESPN’s new deal with the NHL will last from the 2021-22 season through the 2027-28 season, the network announced today.

With the pandemic hurting NHL revenues, the league is expected to seek an increase in revenues, starting with its national TV deals. For a substantial bump, the deal will likely need to carve out some exclusive game content for one of the new subscription direct-to-consumer platforms, such as ESPN+ or Peacock.

A new NHL season is on the way. On Sunday, the league announced it will play a 56-game regular season starting Jan. 13, 2021. The Stanley Cup Playoffs are slated to begin May 8 and last into July.