The local media rights landscape continues to shift, with one of the newer players suffering a pair of abrupt back-to-back setbacks.
The streaming service Victory+ has missed several recent rights payments, Alex Silverman of Sports Business Journal reported Wednesday, news that comes as the NHL Ducks and MLB Rangers are abruptly exiting their respective deals the streamer. The Rangers announced Wednesday that they are leaving Victory+ effective immediately, with their local streaming option shifting to a new direct-to-subscriber platform called BZZR.
Current Victory+ subscribers able to transfer their accounts to the new service, and Rangers games will continue to air on their primary home — the aptly-acronymed RSN Rangers Sports Network.
The Ducks have not officially announced their exit, but per Silverman the team has notified Victory+ that it will terminate their agreement with two years left on the deal. Unlike the Rangers, who distribute their games via RSN and direct-to-subscriber streaming, the Ducks carried their games primarily through Victory+. Per Silverman, the team has a deal in place to shift games over-the-air to a local Fox affiliate next season, but still plans to offer a streaming option.
Elsewhere, the WNBA Lynx — whose games currently remain on Victory+ — announced this week that three upcoming games will be simulcast on local NBC affiliate KARE. While that does not necessarily signal any dissatisfaction with Victory+, which is only months into its deal to carry Lynx games, the timing is notable.
In the wake of the decline of Main Street Sports Group, Victory+ has been floated as a potential contender to acquire local sports rights during the intervening period between the collapse of the RSN model and the launch of the centralized local rights platforms leagues are expected to launch in the coming years. But even with all of the Main Street Sports Group teams on the market, none have yet struck a deal with Victory+ — or any streamer.
The Milwaukee Bucks last week reached a deal with Rincon Broadcasting Group to carry all of their games this season on over-the-air broadcast station WCGV, which previously carried the team’s games from 1988-94 and again from 1999-2007, and the station has already begun carrying games during the ongoing NBA Summer League.
The Heat and Pistons previously shifted to an over-the-air platform for next season.
In an interview with Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal earlier this year, Neil Gruninger — the president and CEO of Victory+ parent company A Parent Media Co. — said Victory+ was offering teams a minimum guarantee and the potential of “additional ways of generating revenue that’s beyond even just advertising and sponsorships.” Teams could potentially make back their old rights revenue, and then some, “over time.”
Victory+ is just one of several companies that have been floated as contenders for the local rights, along with Fubo, DAZN and even the aforementioned Rangers Sports Network — meaning the streamer was in business with a theoretical competitor. In a report on the Rangers’ interest last month, SBJ’s Friend wrote that Victory+ had begun pitching NBA teams on two-year deals, leading some in the league to wonder whether it could push back plans to launch a centralized local broadcasting solution by next year.
That is evidently not in the cards, as NBA commissioner Adam Silver said after a board of governors meeting Tuesday that the centralized platform will “absolutely” be in place for the 2027-28 season. While the league does not have enough time to put a platform together for this coming season — and will instead “cobble together a series of solutions” — Silver said he feels “good” about the prospects of having “something on a national basis in place” for 2027-28.
Silverman reported that the NHL is planning to set up a centralized production platforms that teams can opt into for the coming season. Major League Baseball already has such a plan in place, and is operating production and distribution of nearly half of its teams this season. MLB, like the NBA, is widely expected to launch a national RSN option in 2028.
