The leaders at Scripps Sports may not drink from the Stanley Cup, but it feels like they’ve had their hands on the chalice for a second straight summer.
On Tuesday, the sports division of The E.W. Scripps Company announced it has signed an exclusive local broadcasting agreement with the Florida Panthers. Games will be shown on WSFL-TV Channel 39 in Miami/Fort Lauderdale and WHDT-TV Channel 9 in West Palm Beach. Including a soon-to-be announced affiliate station in Fort Myers, the new arrangement will give the Stanley Cup champions a wider reach among the 2.6 million households across the three South Florida markets.
This marks the second year in a row that the nascent sports media player has poached the newest Cup winner after signing a pact with the Vegas Golden Knights last offseason.
It also marks the end of a nearly 30-year relationship between the Panthers and the multiple incarnations of Bally Sports Florida, which previously lived as SportsChannel Florida and Fox Sports Florida.
“We appreciate Diamond navigating the challenges that come with that (sports TV) evolution,” Mark Zarthar, the chief strategy officer for the Panthers, said in a phone interview. “They did everything in their power to keep the Panthers, but it just came to a point where both parties agreed makes sense for us to go our separate ways. And so that then opened the door for us to meet with Scripps and understand the value they can provide for us.”
Starting this fall, Scripps will produce locally televised preseason and regular season games as well as the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It will also work with the team to create a direct-to-consumer (D2C) streaming platform that will show live games to fans throughout South Florida.
The process will be similar to what the media company has done for the Golden Knights and the former Arizona Coyotes (now the Utah Hockey Club). While Scripps Sports has made inroads on a national scale with the WNBA and NWSL, the local carriage deals have been a godsend for the two Pacific Division hockey teams, as they were seeking greater reach than the diminishing footprints their former RSNs could provide. The D2C product promises to help reach consumers where they are.
“We just finished our first season out in Vegas where, in addition to having the broadcast rights, we offered a streaming platform, and it was wildly successful,” Brian Lawlor, president of Scripps Sports, said in a separate phone interview. “We saw great engagement there. Advertisers were active on that platform as well as the consumers.”
Said Zarthar: “And for a marketplace like South Florida, it’s super competitive from an entertainment standpoint. In the winter here, it’s beautiful. People go to the beach, they go to the golf course, they go to the club; that is a barrier that we face. It’s another reason why we needed to make our game as easily findable on television as we possibly could, and Scripps is going to help us do that.”
Zarthar highlighted the significant growth of hockey in South Florida in the last three seasons, not just in television viewership and in-arena attendance, but in youth participation. It’s something Lawlor, a former Panthers season ticket holder before his media career pulled him northward, attested to while attending Game 7 of the Final last week. Upon returning to his hotel room afterward, he witnessed a diverse crowd of Floridians—native-born and relocated snowbirds—celebrating in downtown Miami.
“Not only do you have the northerners with the great DNA of hockey, but now because it’s a winning franchise, (the Panthers) are developing a new fan base,” he said. “All of that told us that we have the platform and the opportunity to be really successful in South Florida.”
As for the beleaguered Diamond Sports Group, Florida’s defection leaves DSG with just 10 NHL teams in its stable: the Anaheim Ducks, Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets, Dallas Stars, Detroit Red Wings, Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota Wild, Nashville Predators, St. Louis Blues and Tampa Bay Lightning.
Eight of those 10 clubs are aligned with RSNs that are wholly owned and operated by Diamond while the Kings and Blues are part-owners of their local carriers.
“After careful review and dialogue, Diamond reached a mutual agreement with the Florida Panthers to end our existing telecast rights contract,” a spokesperson for Diamond Sports Group said in a statement. “We greatly value the relationships we have built with the Panthers and their fans, and we wish them the best. We remain in productive discussions with the NHL around go-forward arrangements with our remaining team partners under contract and are focused on reorganizing as a sustainable and profitable entity.”
Diamond is scheduled to present a comprehensive plan to emerge from bankruptcy in a July 29 confirmation hearing in Houston.
With assistance from Anthony Crupi.
(This story has been updated in the second-to-last paragraph to add the statement from Diamond Sports Group.)
