THE National Hockey League has announced a huge broadcast change beginning this season.
And the move will bring the league in line with the National Football League.
NHL TV has signed a deal with DAZN across the globe[/caption]
The deal is similar to DAZN’s agreement with the NFL[/caption]
The NHL announced a global partnership with DAZN this week.
The move will see NHL Network available to stream in nearly 200 countries across the globe.
Every game will also be available to stream in those territories – including the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The only countries the new NHL.TV platform is not available in are the US, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
The move is similar to the deal the NFL signed with DAZN.
DAZN is now the home of NFL Game Pass around the globe – excluding the US and China.
DAZN senior vice president for strategy and business development Zander Berlinski spoke to The Sun about DAZN’s strategy with US sports leagues.
“We’re trying to become an aggregator to have as much sports content that fans want anywhere in the world,” he said.
“We’re trying to not only have a core streaming experience, but augment that with different benefits to allow fans to interact in the different ways that they may want to within the sports ecosystem.
“We’re also sort of building on trying to become the home of US sports internationally.
“The deal with the NHL, we’re basically doing the same thing we did with GamePass with them so they’ll be shutting down their NHL TV app and moving it over to us.
“We also recently announced a college football and basketball deal in parts of MENA and Europe.
“We’re starting to build a strong footprint in an area that we’ve seen a lot of interest in, an area we think that has growth and we think that is complementary to our strategy but also where our strengths align in terms of.
“Obviously we’re bigger internationally than we are in the US and a lot of these leagues are looking for ways to grow internationally.”
The NHL also issued a statement on the new deal with DAZN.
It will begin in October with the new hockey season.
Chief operating officer Steve McArdle said, “The NHL is a global League, and with 30 percent of our Players born outside of North America, engaging our international fans is a significant priority.
“Media distribution is at the core of our global strategy.
“We are thrilled to partner with DAZN to continue to expand our global reach and engage with our fast-growing international fan base.
“Our shared commitment to innovation, gold standard technology and providing an exceptional content delivery service will allow us to deliver NHL content to hockey fans around the world on the platforms they prefer.”
