Report: NHL signs 7-year deal with Turner Sports
Turner Sports has picked up the remainder of the NHL's media rights as part of a seven-year deal worth $225 million per season, report The Athletic's Sean Shapiro and Richard Deitsch.
NBC - which has aired NHL games for the past 16 years - has reportedly moved on from bidding for a broadcast deal with the league. The network won't carry NHL games beyond this season, the final campaign of a 10-year contract worth $2 billion, according to Shapiro and Deitsch.
Turner Sports hasn't aired hockey games since broadcasting Atlanta Flames contests in the 1970s, according to The Associated Press' Joe Reedy. Its outlets include TNT, TBS, and AT&T Sportsnet, and it already owns broadcasting rights for NBA and MLB games.
The NHL and The Walt Disney Company agreed in March to a seven-year deal reportedly worth over $400 million per season to use ESPN and ABC as league broadcasting partners. That deal gives ESPN exclusive rights to four Stanley Cup Finals and guarantees exclusive rights to 25 regular-season games per year for either ABC or ESPN. It also includes coverage rights for the All-Star Game, as well as streaming rights.
This marks the first time since 1998-99 that the NHL will have two network partners in the U.S., according to Reedy.