The NHL is returning to ESPN in a seven-year deal, according to multiple reports Tuesday.
Canada’s SportsNet and the New York Post reported Tuesday that ESPN and the NHL have agreed to a seven-year media rights deal that will go into effect next season. Per the latter, the Stanley Cup Final will air on ESPN/ABC in four of those seven years.
Financial terms were not immediately available. The deal could be announced in the coming days.
Incumbent NBC could still retain a portion of the NHL’s media rights, including the three other Stanley Cup Final series, but FOX remains in contention and CBS “can’t be entirely ruled out,” per the Post.
ESPN has not carried NHL games on its linear platforms since the end of the 2003-04 season, though the over-the-top service ESPN+ has aired games in recent years. ESPN+ is expected to continue airing games in the new deal. Prior to parting ways with the NHL in 2004, ESPN had carried games uninterrupted since 1992 — airing part of every Stanley Cup Final during that time. Prior to that, it aired games from 1980-82 and 1985-88.
NBC acquired NHL rights just before the owners’ 2004-05 lockout of players and has carried games ever since. It would have shared rights (and the Stanley Cup Final) with ESPN in the 2004-05 season had that not been canceled. Outdoor Life Network (later Versus) replaced ESPN as the league’s cable partner in the 2005-06 season and became NBC’s corporate sibling — rebranding as NBCSN — after parent company Comcast acquired NBC Universal. Since that acquisition went final in 2011, NBC has been the NHL’s sole media rights partner.
Notably, NBC plans to shutter NBCSN at the end of this year.
When ESPN declined to pick up its $60 million option to carry NHL games back in 2005, then-executive Mark Shapiro was vocal about the league’s lack of value: “We were losing money on the NHL. It was a damaged brand. … We still want to do a deal on smart economic terms. Are they worth $60 million? No, they’re not.” The blunt talk, typical of the Shapiro era, helped foster no small amount of hostility among at least some of the NHL’s fanbase towards ESPN in the years since — as did a relative dearth of hockey coverage on ESPN’s studio shows.
[News from SportsNet 3.9, NYP 3.9, Shapiro comments from Bloomberg 10.16.2005]
