TNT joining ESPN as the Other NHL US Broadcast Partner

[Hoss]

Just now, Hank said:

I may have never agreed with anything you've posted in the past, but THIS in an excellent post. I tried to like it twice. Spot on. 

I could just send you my SoundCloud if that counts as a second like

[Eleven]

12 minutes ago, Hoss said:

Again, there is no such thing as a super team outside of the NBA. Other leagues don’t compare because no single player has the same impact in other leagues.

Seems there were last time ESPN had the rights.

[Hank]

3 hours ago, thewookie1 said:

I can understand the latter point, they should adjust the pad size but I'm more referring to the tactical approach to basketball which the NBA has turned into only offense with few to no teams actually playing any real systems or strategic defensive play. I enjoy college basketball far more for that very reason.

As for the bolded part, fans are fickle idiots (we all fall into this to be honest 🙂 ) but I absolutely despise fluid player movement. I like loyalty, I like a player sticking with the team who drafted him for 19 years through all the ups and downs. I enjoy the camaraderie that can form on a team where the players are all playing for each other and to win it all. Like the commercial, "we" versus "I"

I hate the NBA's super teams and the mercenary approach the NBA has. If I had it my way, RFAs would have to wait until they were 30 to test the UFA market. Pay your dues to the team whom drafts you and the fans that support you and if you still haven't had success then you are free to Cup Chase. Most hockey fans are team-centric not player-centric and the league needs to understand that the NBA's fluid style won't translate well in the NHL. I honestly have hated the whole "basketball friends" group sign thing that has gone on for the last decade plus. 

I wish they would go in a different direction. I  think the league would be a better product if players could not be drafted before their 20th birthday, their ELC ran five seasons instead of three then they were UFAs, and contracts after the ELC could not be longer than three years. With a hard cap (which the NBA don't really have) you can't build a "super team" because there's not enough cap room to pay more than a few players. 

[Hoss]

4 minutes ago, Eleven said:

Seems there were last time ESPN had the rights.

There’s also only one super team currently in the NBA, to be fair (Brooklyn).

[thewookie1]

5 hours ago, Hoss said:

Defense is as good as it has ever been in the NBA but the rule enforcement just makes playing defense that much harder. You have your occasional clip of a guy straight up not caring on defense but you’d find plenty of that in any era if you had social media. There were guys back in the day in the NBA that had very little worthwhile skill and were there purely because they were hard to move or get around. That doesn’t make the game better.

I think the fluid player movement makes “loyalty” that much sweeter but I also think “loyalty” is a farce team owners have pushed on us for decades as a means of controlling the cost of players and keeping salaries lower. Owners very rarely show loyalty but we always expect players to.

It’s hard to compare other leagues in the “super team” sense because there is no major sport where one or two players makes that big of a difference. Not even close to the way it does in the NBA.

Also, locking a 19 year old (as most NBA rookies are) into an 11-year employment contract at a location they don’t personally get to choose is absolute insanity. The concept of “paying your dues” after dedicating your life growing up to the craft gives off some very bad vibes.

I guess while some agree with you, I'm 100% against it 🙂

[DarthEbriate]

17 hours ago, Brawndo said:

Add the helmet ads

Add the Canadian Deal which Is 300 Million per year so that’s almost a billion dollars per year.

Existing Deal was 200 Million per year.

The cap is flat, but when it goes up, it's going to be like looking at a Death Star vs. a Starkiller Base.

Nice. The TNT deal replaces the entirety of the NBC deal. ESPN is 400M of entirely new money. And as you point out, helmet ads are here to stay. Division names are silly, but profitable. A few more logos here and there. Plus Honda, Enterprise, and the advertisement revenues of both streaming and live TV. The continuing bump of new Vegas and Seattle revenue. And when the Olympics come back --- team USA might be really good, which will at least temporarily provide a spike in interest.

17 hours ago, nfreeman said:

Thanks.  I was more curious about what the increase in the US national rights was going to do to the cap -- it looks like the increase is about $425MM per year, which is about a $13.3MM increase per team per year. 

I think we'll see the cap get over $100M/season by 2025-26. Once they get the debts of last year and this year paid off, it's going to get silly. At the end of its term, Skinner's contract will still be terrible, but not unmovable. 

[Kruppstahl]

This is an interesting development in that I am generally happy to be moving on from NBC and their approach to hockey, which I rather dislike.

However, TNT and TBS are NOTORIOUS for their crappy broadcasting engineering quality for MLB playoff games. That first round of the playoffs always seems to end up on "TNT" and the broadcasting quality is atrocious.

Hopefully they will raise their game for hockey, but I wouldn't count on it.

I think ESPN will be the much better place to watch hockey.  They did a nice job covering the sport before turning it over to NBC.

Lastly, I have no idea how these TV networks find the value in these deals!  No one watches NHL hockey!  Like no one.

How are they getting their money back?

 

 

On 3/9/2021 at 5:12 PM, Let's Go B-Lo said:

This interesting. Hopefully it's for better money than NBC and they actually promote and don't bury it on espn+

The "Growth of the game" does not benefit you, the fan of hockey.

 

[#freejame]

20 minutes ago, Kruppstahl said:

This is an interesting development in that I am generally happy to be moving on from NBC and their approach to hockey, which I rather dislike.

However, TNT and TBS are NOTORIOUS for their crappy broadcasting engineering quality for MLB playoff games. That first round of the playoffs always seems to end up on "TNT" and the broadcasting quality is atrocious.

Hopefully they will raise their game for hockey, but I wouldn't count on it.

I think ESPN will be the much better place to watch hockey.  They did a nice job covering the sport before turning it over to NBC.

Lastly, I have no idea how these TV networks find the value in these deals!  No one watches NHL hockey!  Like no one.

How are they getting their money back?

 

 

The "Growth of the game" does not benefit you, the fan of hockey.

 

Yes it does. More youth interest leads to better talent leads to a better on-ice. Auston Matthews being a prime example. 

[ubkev]

20 hours ago, thewookie1 said:

I don't see any problem with it, they are getting paid oodles of money to play a sport and entertain us. I think they should be able to deal with some amount restriction to where they go.

Charles Comiskey would love this guy. 

[LabattBlue]

So none of the Stanley Cup Playoffs/Finals will be on broadcast TV when this deal begins?  When was the last time that happened?  Seriously don’t remember.  

[PromoTheRobot]

On 3/9/2021 at 5:39 PM, inkman said:

I heard the teams are getting $50 Tim Hortons gift cards as payment 

That, plus a billion split 32 ways.

[thewookie1]

28 minutes ago, LabattBlue said:

So none of the Stanley Cup Playoffs/Finals will be on broadcast TV when this deal begins?  When was the last time that happened?  Seriously don’t remember.  

No I believe they’ll still be on TV as well. Wouldn’t make any sense to lob off a portion of the viewers.

[Taro T]

9 minutes ago, thewookie1 said:

No I believe they’ll still be on TV as well. Wouldn’t make any sense to lob off a portion of the viewers.

Pretty sure he meant OTA networks such as NBC or FOX.

[LabattBlue]

4 minutes ago, Taro T said:

Pretty sure he meant OTA networks such as NBC or FOX.

Yes...sorry for the confusion.  That is what I was referring to.

[Hank]

I would think the finals would be broadcast on ABC,  which is under the Disney umbrella with ESPN. 

[#freejame]

8 minutes ago, Hank said:

I would think the finals would be broadcast on ABC,  which is under the Disney umbrella with ESPN. 

Exactly this. They will likely be on ABC. Someone more familiar with the NBA finals can likely confirm. 

[Hoss]

3 hours ago, #freejame said:

Exactly this. They will likely be on ABC. Someone more familiar with the NBA finals can likely confirm. 

They will not. This is the breakdown of rights:

2022, 2024, 2026 and 2028 Stanley Cup Finals will all be on ABC. 2023, 2025, 2027 will all be on TNT and/or TBS. Source

ABC/ESPN and TNT/TBS will split the Conference Finals - one conference on one network and one on the other. The two networks will also split the first two rounds so all playoff games will be on one of those networks.

NHL Winter Classic will be on TNT/TBS each season.

TNT/TBS gets 72 regular-season games per season. ABC/ESPN will air 25 regular season games. That's a total of 97 games across those four networks (went back to 2019 to see and NBC Networks broadcast 109 regular season games that year so the number of those games actually goes down).

ESPN+ and Hulu, though, will air 75 NATIONAL games each season. ESPN+ becomes the new home of what was "NHL.tv," airing over 1,000 "out-of-market" regular season games.

HBO Max will get simulcast rights to some games but it's not specified how many games and that will be LATER in the agreement (also not specified).

Turner is developing a studio where they will host games and compared it to their Inside the NBA studio which is some of the best sports studio broadcasting you'll find.

[drnkirishone]

so my question is what is the streaming service for tnt/tbs games? hbo max?

[Hoss]

4 minutes ago, drnkirishone said:

so my question is what is the streaming service for tnt/tbs games? hbo max?

That appears to be the case but it sounds like they won't have games on HBO Max in the first year. They are focusing on the broadcasts first before getting the streaming simulcast going. Source

I don't think the games on TNT/TBS will be available for streaming except maybe on the TNT app?

[Hoss]

One question I'm curious about and maybe others have the answer: what happens with NHL Network? I can't find those details anywhere. It's an NHL property that is partially owned by NBC. They had a deal with MLBAM who operates the studio/digital properties but that deal is up after this season. Is it being dissolved?

[drnkirishone]

9 minutes ago, Hoss said:

That appears to be the case but it sounds like they won't have games on HBO Max in the first year. They are focusing on the broadcasts first before getting the streaming simulcast going. Source

I don't think the games on TNT/TBS will be available for streaming except maybe on the TNT app?

so you need a cable subscription to watch the tnt/tbs games it sounds like

[Hoss]

9 minutes ago, drnkirishone said:

so you need a cable subscription to watch the tnt/tbs games it sounds like

That appears to be correct. It also wasn't specific if the 25 ABC/ESPN games will all be on ESPN+ and whether or not those games count in the 75 "national" games they'll be broadcasting on ESPN+/Hulu.

[Zamboni]

1 hour ago, drnkirishone said:

so my question is what is the streaming service for tnt/tbs games? hbo max?

Fubo - stream

Spectrum - stream and cable 

sling tv - stream

Fios - cable (is streaming offered?)

Dish network 

Direct tv

And I’m sure others I’m not thinking about .... all offer TNT/TBS and ESPN.

 

if I’m wrong, please correct me.

[Hoss]

33 minutes ago, Zamboni said:

Fubo - stream

Spectrum - stream and cable 

sling tv - stream

Fios - cable (is streaming offered?)

Dish network 

Direct tv

And I’m sure others I’m not thinking about .... all offer TNT/TBS and ESPN.

 

if I’m wrong, please correct me.

These are all some form of "cable" service even if they're digital. He's asking specifically about streaming offerings.

[Hoss]

Things are off to a wonderful start ...