The Anaheim Ducks on Tuesday joined a handful of professional sports teams moving away from cable services as the primary carrier of games in their home markets, announcing that Victory+ will be selected as the primary partner for games and other programming.
Viewers will no longer have to pay to watch Ducks games, and the partnership ends the Ducks’ relationship with Bally Sports, part of a suite of regional networks owned by Diamond Sports Group. Viewers will be able to watch nearly every Ducks game of the 2024-25 regular season from anywhere on their television, streaming device or through the Victory+ app on their phone, as long as they live within the team’s designated market area.
Victory+ will broadcast every Ducks game except for a few that will air on NHL national broadcast partners TNT or ESPN in the U.S. Additionally, in Southern California, KCOP-TV will broadcast 65 locally produced games.
Ducks president Aaron Teetz said he expects one of the team’s six preseason games to be the debut, with the season opener at San Jose on Oct. 12 being the first of 78 regular-season games that could potentially be aired on the platform.
The deal between the Ducks and A Parent Media Co., the direct-to-consumer streaming service that operates Victory+, covers the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons and could be extended.
Longtime play-by-play announcer John Ahlers and analyst Brian Hayward will continue to call Ducks games, with Kent French, Ali Rosoff and Guy Hebert also returning as the team’s play-by-play announcers. Teets said there will also be ancillary programming, such as behind-the-scenes features with players, via a dedicated Ducks channel on Victory+.
“We think this is something that the community will love, especially our fans, because it allows us to provide our content for free so they can consume it however they want,” Teets told The Athletic.
Teets said the change will help the team achieve its goal of delivering content throughout the entire Los Angeles-area market, a vast area that covers about 8 million households across many Southern California counties and Hawaii.
Diamond Sports Group, which owns the Bally Sports regional networks, filed for bankruptcy in spring 2023. With uncertainty over the Diamonds’ future, some teams have responded by airing games on their own paid subscription channels or partnering with other networks. The Dallas Stars signed with Victory+ in July, moving away from Bally Sports Southwest. The Los Angeles Kings will remain with Bally Sports West per a multi-year deal they signed in September 2023.
Bally Sports offered Ducks games to anyone in-market who wasn’t a cable or satellite subscriber and watched on a device for a monthly fee. But some streaming services don’t offer the network or have dropped it. The Ducks continued to negotiate with Diamond after his contract expired, but Teets said the Ducks had been exploring other options all summer. Team owners Henry and Susan Samueli approved the switch to ad-supported Victory+. Parent Media, which made its name with kids’ programming and content, is expanding its sports portfolio with Victory+.
“We need to prioritize streaming,” Teets said, “and the number of fans able to watch our games, and we’re incredibly grateful to Henry and Susan for being able to prioritize streaming in their market for the benefit of all Ducks and NHL fans.”
“We’ve found a great model that will allow us to maximize distribution, allowing every household in the DMA to watch our games for free. This is a huge step forward for our fan base, our team and our brand. We’re really looking forward to watching that first broadcast.”
Teets called Bally Sports and Diamond Sports Group “great partners” and said Diamond CEO David Pleschlak and Bally Sports West/SoCal general manager Steve Simpson have been “great partners” in working through the financial issues that have plagued the parent company. “But we viewed this as an opportunity rather than something to improve,” the Ducks president added.
The Ducks’ decision to make the change is aimed at providing a more comfortable viewing experience for fans frustrated by the fact that their preferred sports viewing options are either unavailable or only accessible through multiple paid platforms.
“This is big for us,” Teets said. “In the past, a lot of different applications had you doing authentication that was tied to your cable system or your satellite provider or whatever. This is a no-brainer. It asks you for your name, asks you to set a password or whatever, and before you know it, you’re logged in and watching Ducks hockey without having to take your credit card out of your pocket. We’re excited about this.”
Teets believes the broadcast switch the Ducks are making reflects the ever-changing medium to which teams must adapt.
“The future is about giving consumers choice,” he said. “I think we’re in the middle of an ever-changing landscape in sports television, and the teams themselves have to remain flexible and make sure they know where their priorities are as they make all these deals. I think you’re going to start seeing greater differentiation from market to market and from team to team over the next few years.”
“But I think what we’re going to see over the next few years is probably going to be more creativity than we’ve seen in a long time.”
(Photo of Trevor Zegras by Rich Gagnon/Getty Images)