The Tampa Bay Lightning is the latest sports team to offer games to fans through free over-the-air television.
The three-time Stanley Cup champions have signed a multiyear local broadcast agreement with Scripps Sports. Except for nationally televised games, all regular season games and the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs will be shown on WXPX-TV (Channel 66), Scripps’ Ion Television affiliate station.
On July 1, WXPX will be rebranded as “The Spot – Tampa 66,” and it will continue to broadcast news and entertainment programs alongside Lightning telecasts.
Steve Griggs, the team’s CEO and vice chairman, said the challenges faced by RSNs had little to do with their decision. Instead, he said, Tampa Bay wants to prioritize local reach.
“We continue to do our research on our fans about what’s important to them,” Griggs said in a phone interview. “Access was the key to watching our games, and we wanted to create something that had no barriers, that is free and easy for all of our fans to watch across Tampa Bay.”
Griggs also connected with his two of his counterparts—Florida Panthers CEO Matt Caldwell and Las Vegas Golden Knights CEO Kerry Bubolz—to learn how those teams made the switch to Scripps Sports and local streaming TV.
“We’ve had conversations over the last year about their ability to expand their audience and what they did with their DTC platform,” he said. “If you’re looking at those three teams, you’re talking about the teams that have won the Stanley Cup in the most recent years. We’re always trying to do bigger and better things and being able to lean on those two guys was part of our process.”
Scripps and the Lightning will also work with ViewLift to launch a direct-to-consumer streaming service that will make Tampa Bay the first NHL franchise to integrate live game streaming into its existing team app. Other teams have created separate platforms for live streaming.
With 2.14 million TV households, the Tampa/St. Petersburg media market is the 12th-largest in the U.S., as counted by Nielsen (via Sports Media Watch). The Lightning’s footprint extends beyond its immediate metro area across Central and North Florida, with their games also shown in the Orlando (1.84 million TV households) and Jacksonville (799,000 TV households) markets.
The new local rights deal brings an end to the Lightning’s 35-year relationship with FanDuel Sports Network Sun and its various incarnations. Lightning games had been broadcasted on the network since the franchise debuted in 1992, and it remained with FanDuel throughout the bankruptcy saga of Diamond Sports Group, now Main Street Sports Group.
Tampa Bay joins the defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers, Golden Knights and Utah Mammoth as NHL teams carried by Scripps’ local affiliate stations. The Lightning will also pad ViewLift’s roster, which recently added New England Sports Network (NESN).
Shifting their broadcasts to Scripps and ViewLift is the latest move as it relates to the business of the Bolts. In October, Jeff Vinik sold the majority share of the franchise to a group of investors led by Blue Owl Capital founders Doug Ostrover and Marc Lipschultz at a valuation of $1.8 billion, which ranks 11th in Sportico’s NHL franchise valuations. Ostrover and Lipschultz were set to pay for the 54% stake within a year of the October announcement.
Additionally, the Lightning signed a multiyear agreement with stadium management firm Oak View Group last month to take on food and hospitality at Amalie Arena, the team’s longtime home. Amalie becomes the first arena primarily for an NHL team to be managed by OVG’s hospitality division.
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