The NHL's defending Stanley Cup champion, the Vegas Golden Knights, filled in an important piece of their innovative local TV rights puzzle Monday, when the team announced a deal with the Ted Leonsis-backed ViewLift to create a direct-to-consumer streaming app serving around 3.2 million households in its local market.
The Golden Knights were left local TV refugees in March, when Warner Bros. Discovery announced plans to cut ties with AT&T SportsNet, a small, struggling regional sports network the conglomerate was left stuck with after myriad M&A-related twists and turns.
Formerly denizens of SportsNet Rocky Mountain, the Golden Knights announced a partnership with Scripps Sports in May to broadcast their games, starting with September's pre-season opener, to a local market that includes not just Nevada, but also parts of Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming.
Based on emerging pattern we are suddenly seeing with pro teams bolting regional sports networks and returning to broadcast with streaming deals on the side, it wasn't surprising to see the Golden Knights also carve out a deal for a DTC app.
And ViewLift, a startup with roots extending deep into Leonsis' groundbreaking, ad-supported indie-film streamer SnagFilms, constitutes a not-so-surprising choice for the Golden Knights.
For starters, ViewLift is already streaming games for another NHL team, Leonsis' Washington Capitals. In fact, the tech vendor is also doing DTC for the other teams in the internet media pioneer's Monumental Sports portfolio, the NBA's Washington Wizards and WNBA's Mystics.
Rick Allen, a longtime Leonsis associate who serves as CEO of ViewLift, told Sportico that more NHL DTC partnerships could be announced by the company shortly. “We are in broad contact with the league, which is a client of ours, as well as a number of individual teams," he said.
Notably, 10 days ago, a lawyer for the NHL told a Houston bankruptcy court overseeing the restructuring of Sinclair's Diamond Sports Group that if a viable post-Chapter 11 plan can't be worked out for Diamond's Bally Sports regional cable, channels soon, the league will look for "injunctive relief" on the contracts tying 12 NHL clubs to Bally Sports.
Ostensibly, those dozen pro hockey clubs would be looking for new means and ways to broadcast and stream their games to local fans.
Meanwhile, other NHL teams being abandoned by AT&T SportsNet include the Pittsburgh Penguins and Seattle Kraken.
A Brief History
Leonsis founded SnagFilms in 2008, along with another America Online impresario, Steve Case, Allen and other internet entrepreneurs.
The innovative SnagFilms achieved plenty of acclaim and tech-blog street cred over the next 12 years, but it was ultimately shuttered in 2020.
Living on, however, was the streaming tech unit that foundationed SnagFilms, ViewLift.
