Stanley Cup Champion Florida Panthers Announce Deal with Scripps to Air Games Free Over the Air
Miami and other cities will have access to in-market Panthers games with nothing more than an antenna starting in 2024.
The Florida Panthers just won the Stanley Cup, but that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped scoring big for the year. On Tuesday, the team announced it will make a big change in its broadcasting arrangements in 2024. The Panthers formerly partnered with Bally Sports Florida to distribute its regular season games not appearing on national channels, but starting this year it will enter into a new marriage with E.W. Scripps, which will distribute games via cable, satellite, and over-the-air (OTA) channels.
Key Details:
- The Panthers will come to OTA channels in Miami/Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Fort Myers.
- A team-specific streaming option available to in-market fans will also launch before the 2024-25 NHL season.
- The departure is bad news for Diamond Sports Group and may be just the first in a series of defections from Bally Sports channels.
Financial terms of the deal between the Panthers and Scripps have not been disclosed, but the deal does have the approval of the NHL. Panthers fans in Miami/Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, and West Palm Beach will see the team move to the Scripps-owned channels listed below before the start of the 2024-25 season. The specific channel Fort Myers audiences will be able to watch the team on is still to be announced before the season starts.
The deal means that Panthers fans in these areas will no longer need a cable subscription to watch the team play. The channels carrying Panthers games will now be available with an OTA antenna, so long as the team isn’t playing on TNT, ESPN, or another national network. The deal will encompass preseason and regular season games, as well as first-round playoff contests.
| Market | Channel |
|---|---|
| Miami/Fort Lauderdale | WSFL-TV (Ch. 39) |
| West Palm Beach | WHDT-TV (Ch. 9) |
| Fort Myers | TBA |
“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,” said Panthers CEO Matthew Caldwell. Scripps’ distribution network and accessibility makes them the ideal partner to stream and carry Panthers content on and off the ice. 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.”
As part of the deal, Scripps will partner with the team to create a new, in-market streaming option that will hit the market before the upcoming season starts in October, though no other details about the service were announced. The Panthers are following the lead of the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken, two other NHL teams that have left former RSN homes for local broadcast channels.
“The Florida Panthers are the best team in the NHL, and their fans deserve to be able to see all of their games on every available broadcast platform, including free over-the-air,” said Brian Lawlor, Scripps Sports president. “When the Stanley Cup champions take the ice in October, Scripps Sports will be proud to bring all locally broadcast games to all the Panthers fans in Miami/Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Fort Myers using our powerful over-the-air TV stations.”
What Does Departure of Panthers Mean for Bally Sports?
Bally Sports Florida will still carry regular season games from the MLB’s Miami Marlins and the NBA’s Orlando Magic, but it will no longer offer any Florida Panthers programming. That means the team will also disappear from the Bally Sports+ streaming service.
In a vacuum, one team departure wouldn’t necessarily mean doom and gloom for the broadcaster that formerly owned their regional sports rights. But Bally Sports’ parent company Diamond Sports Group is facing serious pressure from the NHL, MLB and NBA to come up with answers about its various carriage agreements with cable distributors. Diamond is still in bankruptcy proceedings, but is poised to ask for approval for its bankruptcy reorganization plan in the coming weeks.
Winning that approval might be difficult if more teams leave the Bally Sports ecosystem, however. The number of teams distributed on TV by Diamond has now fallen to 15 NBA clubs, 10 NHL, and 12 MLB. If more teams make other broadcasting arrangements for the season, it will be difficult for Diamond to convince Comcast to come back to the negotiating table. Comcast dropped Bally Sports channels at the end of April for Xfinity TV customers, and without a Comcast partnership many league executives fear Diamond won’t make enough revenue to remain a viable business.
If the loss of the Panthers opens the floodgates to more teams making alternative broadcasting arrangements for the upcoming season, it would likely be the final nail in the coffin for Diamond Sports Group. The company is due back in court on July 29, if more emergency hearings in bankruptcy court are not called in the intervening days.
Bally Sports+
Bally Sports+ is a direct-to-consumer streaming service that offers live games for those who want access to their local Bally Sports RSN without subscribing to a cable or satellite package.