Perhaps the biggest question that started at the end of last season and carried over into the offseason is “how will I watch the Hurricanes next season?” On Tuesday we got an answer—sort of.
The Hurricanes announced the formation of their own network that will broadcast locally. This Hurricanes network will still employ Mike Maniscalco and Tripp Tracy to call the games, but importantly the Hurricanes will now be the ones in charge of distribution of their product instead of relying on a third party
like the previous provider, FanDuel Sports.
FanDuel Sports was the sponsored name for Main Street Sports, the most recent iteration of the regional sports network that started as Fox Sports decades ago and had changed hands a few times due to sells and bankruptcies. While other teams had been leaving this company to venture out in different paths to broadcast their product, the Hurricanes stuck with this company until the company shuttered once the playoffs were completed.
The speculation had been wide about what the Canes would do, and a big part of the concern was the high cost of actually producing the product. While Carolina historically didn’t recieve a high amount for their local rights, in turn the Canes didn’t have to bear the cost of the camera people, transmission, production staff, and so forth. Mansicalco, Tracy, and Shane Willis were employed by the team but everyone else you saw in front and behind the camera were paid by Main Street Sports. All of those components would have needed to be covered for the Canes to go on their own.
That hurdle has now been removed by the NHL. The league also announced on Tuesday that they are starting a centralized production hub that will allow them to take on the brunt of the work for producing games. It will include handling pre and post game programing, but most importantly, while they will take on the cost of the production they are leaving it to the teams to deal with getting that product on the air. This allows the NHL to use this to provide for all 32 teams, and allows the teams the ability to collect all the fees for being broadcast on a cable provider—Including the YouTubes Hulus, DirectTVs of the world—and be in charge of advertising.
So back to the central question that everyone is asking—how can I watch the Canes? Well, we still don’t know.
All the Canes did Tuesday is announce that they are, basically, going in-house for showing the games this season and that they will announce how those broadcasts will be broadcast later. That’s the facts of what we know, so from here on we move to speculation.
It would seem that by going in-house and promising a product that’s going to be both on a service and streaming, plus maybe some over-the-air games like they’ve had the last couple of seasons, that their aim is to replicate how fans had gotten used to watching the Canes over the past couple of decades. Now, though, instead of having to sit back while Main Street gets into a carriage argument with these companies, they’ll be able to do it themselves. This puts them in a better position to, perhaps, be on in such a way to where they can be seen. Main Street Sports was looking to make as much as they could to recoup their investment, meaning that for them they would rather not be on a service instead of taking a small rate.
The Canes, however, want to be seen because not only will they get the fees from these services, they get to make lucrative advertising deals. The more they are on these services, the more they can charge for advertising. They also can decide what’s the write price for their dedicated streaming service, again hoping more for access.
The important thing to remember about the set up for the Canes until this point was that the local broadcasts were sold as a package to Main Street Sports. Basically “we’ll pay you x for the right to show the games locally, but you have no control on which service will carry them.” The Canes took the check for the rights, whatever it was, and then sat back while Main Street struggled consistently to get on providers. It was always worth going with Main Street because they were shouldering the cost of the broadcast.
Now the league is saying they’ll shoulder the cost AND the Canes can be the ones who control how they’ll be shown. It’s essentially the best of both worlds.
Why is the NHL doing this? Ultimately it’s about the way all local rights for all the non-NFL leagues have been trying to adapt to the collapse of the whole regional sports network model. Each of these leagues are hoping to collect all the local rights and, in some form, take over the right to produce and distribute them. Then, they can offer this distribution to a company like ESPN, HBO Max, or Amazon and have them be the ones that actually control those rights. The idea is that if you wanted to stream the team, instead of going team-specific, you get access to them by having that service.
In simpler terms—it’s like how you watch every team in the league now on ESPN+, but now it would also include the local team possibly for an additional charge.
The NHL could quickly be the canary in the coal mine for these other leagues as the deal they signed with ESPN and TNT is up in two seasons. Coming off record ratings for their Stanley Cup against two warm weather franchises, the league has to realize their position in the next negotiation is pretty strong. This centralized hub will be part of these negotiations, which have to start soon.
As for the Canes, this is arguably the best time they could have asked for to do this. Coming off the Stanley Cup win interest in the team has never been higher. Now that these services just have to deal with the Canes instead of Main Street, it’d presumably be a lot easier to make a deal to carry them as they don’t have to pay the same rate to carry, say, the LA Kings as they would for the Canes.
So the short answer—however you watched the Canes last year, you’re probably looking at a similar way this year just possibly on a different channel. If you streamed them on the FanDuel Sports app, now you are probably going to have to pay the Canes directly. Those of you who subscribe to services like YouTube and Hulu that didn’t carry them—you now have some hope that you’ll finally be able to easily watch them. We’ll see as the season gets closer.
