Florida Panthers games are moving from cable to local broadcast stations

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Sergei Bobrovsky, #72, and the Florida Panthers celebrate the Stanley Cup win following a 2-1 victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 7 of the NHL Stanley Cup Final at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida, on June 24, 2024. The Florida Panthers are skating to a new TV home. The National Hockey League Stanley Cup champions have inked a deal to air regular season games on local broadcast networks in Florida and leave behind the cable TV regional sports network that has long been their home. The Panthers, which have appeared in the Stanley Cup finals two years in a row, signed a multiyear deal with E.W. Scripps that allows the broadcast station owner to televise all locally produced Panthers preseason and regular season games as well as round one of the playoffs. The Panthers are also working with Scripps Sports to launch a streaming service, with further details expected prior to the start of the 2024 season. Terms of the deal, which begins this coming season, were not disclosed. Professional sports teams have been increasingly opting for deals with local broadcast station owners as the regional sports network business is dragged down by consumers leaving the pay TV bundle in favor of streaming. In particular, Diamond Sports Group — the owner of the Panthers' prior TV home, Bally Sports Florida — has been under bankruptcy protection since March 2023. "After careful review and dialogue, Diamond reached a mutual agreement with the Florida Panthers to end our existing telecast rights contract," a Diamond spokesperson said in a statement. "We greatly value the relationships we have built with the Panthers and their fans, and we wish them the best. We remain in productive discussions with the NHL around go-forward arrangements with our remaining team partners under contract and are focused on reorganizing as a sustainable and profitable entity."