NHL, NBC Agree to a Deal

The NHL isn’t going to be left out in the cold after all.

In danger of not having a broadcast network partner, the NHL has found one in NBC.

A two-year agreement between the NHL and NBC was announced Wednesday.

That’s the good news for the league. The bad news is NBC will not pay a rights fee. It’s a revenue-sharing deal.

Also announced Wednesday was a new agreement between the NHL and ESPN, even though ESPN’s sister network, ABC, is now out of the picture.

ABC and ESPN were in the fifth year of a contract that averaged $120 million a year. Under the new one-year agreement, ESPN will pay about half that.

ESPN and ESPN2 televised 70 regular-season games this year, but the new agreement calls for ESPN2 to televise only 40 regular-season games, with ESPN not televising any.

However, ESPN will televise next season’s All-Star game, playoff games and the first two games of the Stanley Cup finals. NBC will televise Games 3 to 7, all in prime time.

NBC’s deal with the NHL is similar to the one it has with the Arena Football League. All advertising revenue goes to NBC until production costs are covered, then there is a 50-50 split between the network and the league.

But the AFL, now in its second year on NBC, has yet to see any network television money. It was announced Tuesday that NBC has renewed its AFL deal for two more years. The AFL is expected to start seeing television money next season.

As for the NHL deal, which is subject to approval by the league’s board, it may be renewed for an additional two years at NBC’s option.

It calls for NBC to televise seven regular-season games, beginning in January, and six playoff games on Saturdays.

Although the ESPN deal is for only one year, ESPN has an option of picking it up for two more years. It is a wide-ranging, multimedia deal involving rights for ESPN HD, ESPN Deportes, ESPN International, ESPN.com and ESPN Classic.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said he was pleased with the new contracts, despite rights fees being cut considerably. He said the NHL is being compensated fairly.

“This is the right deal at the right time with the right parties,” Bettman said.

The NHL is bracing for an off-season that will include labor talks to head off a potential lockout that could disrupt next season after the collective bargaining agreement expires Sept. 15.

Bettman hopes that NBC’s strong prime-time lineup Thursday and Friday and its presence with viewers in the 18-49 demographic will draw a larger audience to the Saturday afternoon games. The network plans to do most of the advertising for the games during prime-time shows Thursday and Friday.

“It was very important to us, obviously, that we had good, important stable relationships going forward on television,” Bettman said.

NBC has been cutting back on sports in recent years and network executives have been saying they would not pay expensive rights fees on deals that could eventually lose money.

Because of the revenue-sharing aspect, NBC can’t lose money on the NHL.

Ken Schanzer, NBC Sports president, said, “We think that this structure makes enormous sense for both sides of the deal.”