Anaheim Ducks shift games away from Bally Sports, announce free streaming option

Joining the handful of professional sports teams breaking from cable services as the primary carrier of their games within their markets, the Anaheim Ducks announced Tuesday that Victory+ will be their main partner for games and other programming.

Viewers will not need to pay a fee to watch Ducks games, and this partnership ends the Ducks’ association with Bally Sports, which is part of the string of regional networks owned by Diamond Sports Group. Through the Victory+ app on TVs, streaming devices and phones, viewers can watch virtually every Ducks game for the 2024-25 regular season from anywhere, as long as they reside within the team’s designated market area.

Victory+ will be the home of all Ducks games, other than the handful of games shown on either TNT or ESPN, the NHL’s national broadcast partners in the United States. Also, in Southern California, KCOP-TV will televise 65 of those locally produced games over the air.

Ducks president Aaron Teats said the hope is that one of the team’s six preseason games will be the debut telecast, with the Oct. 12 season-opening game at San Jose being the first of what could be 78 regular-season games shown on the platform.

The deal struck between direct-to-consumer streaming service A Parent Media Co., which runs Victory+, and the Ducks is for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons, with the possibility that it could be extended.

Longtime play-by-play announcer John Ahlers and analyst Brian Hayward are expected to continue doing Ducks games, with Kent French, Aly Lozoff and Guy Hebert returning as part of the team’s broadcasts. Teats said there will be ancillary programming, such as behind-the-scenes player features, through a specific Ducks channel on Victory+.

“I think this is going to be something that’s going to be appreciated by the community and specifically our fans, in that we can bring this to them however they want to consume our content and we can bring it to them free of charge,” Teats told The Athletic.

Teats said this change accomplishes the team’s goal of distributing content to the entire Los Angeles regional market, a vast area covering approximately 8 million households across numerous Southern California counties and Hawaii.

Diamond Sports Group, which owns the Bally Sports regional networks, filed for bankruptcy in the spring of 2023. Some teams have reacted to the resulting uncertainty over Diamond’s future by televising games through their own paid subscription channels or by teaming with other networks. The Dallas Stars signed on with Victory+ in July, moving away from Bally Sports Southwest. The Los Angeles Kings remain on Bally Sports West, through a multi-year deal reached in Sept. 2023.

Bally Sports offered Ducks games to non-cable/satellite subscribers for a monthly fee to anyone viewing on devices within their market. Some streaming services, however, did not offer the network or have dropped it. While the Ducks continued to negotiate with Diamond after their contract expired, Teats said the Ducks had been looking at different options throughout the summer. Team owners Henry and Susan Samueli signed off on the switch to the ad-supported Victory+. A Parent Media Co., which made its name in children’s programming and content, is increasing its sports portfolio with Victory+.

“We need to prioritize distribution,” Teats said. “We need to prioritize the number of fans that will have access to watch our games. And I give Henry and Susan all the credit in the world for being able to prioritize the distribution in the market for all Ducks and all NHL fans.

“We found a great model to achieve maximum distribution, where 100 percent of the households in our DMA will have access to our games and at zero cost. And that is a huge step forward for our fan base and for our team and our brand. We’re real excited about seeing that first broadcast.”

Teats called Bally Sports and Diamond Sports Group “great partners” and said Diamond CEO David Preschlack and Bally Sports West/SoCal general manager Steve Simpson were “first class” to work with through the financial issues that have plagued the parent company. “But it wasn’t so much something that needed to be improved on as much as we saw this as opportunity,” the Ducks’ president added.

Finding greater ease for fans who often have been left frustrated with their preferred sports viewing options either being unavailable or only being accessible through multiple paid platforms is what drove the Ducks to make a change.

“That’s a big deal for us,” Teats said. “Before, in many different applications, you have authentication that is tied to your cable system or your satellite provider or whatever. This is nothing. They’re going to ask your name, ask you to set up a password perhaps or whatever and, boom, you’re in and you’re watching Ducks hockey. There’s no credit card coming out of your pocket. And we’re excited about that.”

The broadcast switch the Ducks are making reflects what Teats feels is part of a continually shifting medium that teams must adapt to.

“The future itself is about providing options for the consumer,” he said. “I think we are smack dab in the middle of an ever-changing landscape of sports television. Teams themselves need to remain flexible and need to make sure they know where their priorities lie as they enter into all of these agreements. I think what we’ll see in the coming years is a lot of differentiation from market to market, team to team.

“But I do think that what we’ll see is probably more creativity in the next few years than we’ve seen in a long, long time.”

(Photo of Trevor Zegras: Rich Gagnon / Getty Images)