The sports broadcasting industry is changing, and the Dallas Stars are at the forefront of its next chapter.
Just days after ending its existing rights agreement with Bally Sports Southwest, the Stars announced Monday morning a new direct-to-consumer streaming app that will allow all in-market fans to watch their games for free starting in the 2024-25 season.
The VICTORY+ app — which will be launched in late summer or early fall on all mobile devices, tablets and smart TVs — will allow Stars fans in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas to watch their team’s regular-season games with no costs or strings attached other than watching advertisements during stoppages of play. Blackout restrictions will still apply for out-of-market fans.
The Stars will be the first major professional sports team to offer free direct-to-consumer streaming of their games.
“We obviously think that this is the future,” said Stars president/CEO Brad Alberts, who spoke exclusively with The Dallas Morning News ahead of the announcement. “This is why we’re doing this. We’re willing to pioneer it and rip the Band-Aid off and go.”
The decision to produce their own in-house content followed a multi-year saga with Bally Sports, which previously held the rights to broadcast Stars games and remains the rightsholder for the Dallas Mavericks, Texas Rangers and Dallas Wings.
Bally’s future had been uncertain since its parent company, Diamond Sports Group, voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March of last year. In addition to last-minute deals and concerns games wouldn’t be available for viewing, the Stars and their fans using the Bally Sports+ app dealt with outages during many of Bally’s broadcasts of games early in the 2023-24 season. Bally had the rights to 70 of the 82 regular-season games last season.
Fans also complained that Bally Sports Southwest was not available on the most popular streaming platforms, including YouTube TV, Hulu and Sling TV. The only options for streaming were DirectTV Stream, FuboTV and the Bally Sports+ app.
Plus, the price for in-market fans was higher than out-of-market. Fans in North Texas could subscribe to the Bally Sports+ app to watch Mavericks, Stars and Wings games (Rangers games are a separate cost) for $19.99 per month or $189.99 per season. Out-of-market fans subscribing to NHL Power Play on ESPN+ pay just $10.99 a month or $109.99 per year.
“The last two years have been incredibly difficult,” Alberts said. “This has been the most complicated business problem I’ve ever faced. To now have control over our destiny makes me feel significantly more comfortable.”
Alberts and the Stars began preparing contingency plans about a year ago in case Bally collapsed midseason. Those options included partnering with local networks like TEGNA or CBS to broadcast over the air and the direct-to-consumer app they ultimately landed on. The Stars began working with A Parent Media Co. Inc. (APMC) to develop their new app. On Monday, the team announced a seven-year agreement with APMC, which had also partnered with Dude Perfect, a sports and comedy group headquartered in Frisco, to create a similar platform that it replicated for the Stars.
Last Wednesday, Diamond Sports Group filed a motion with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas to request permission to dissolve its rights with the Stars ahead of the 2024-25 season, ending a 25-year partnership and paving the way for the VICTORY+ announcement.
The filing states the Stars “requested that the parties mutually terminate the Stars agreement in advance of the 2024–25 NHL season” and that Diamond Sports Group “determined that they lose money broadcasting games under the Stars agreement.” For those reasons, the two parties came to a mutual agreement to terminate the deal that was set to expire next May.
Dallas became the second NHL franchise to split from Diamond this month. The day before the motion was filed, the Florida Panthers announced they’d be moving their in-market games to over-the-air Scripps stations in Miami, West Palm Beach and Fort Myers.
While the Stars will no longer receive revenue via their agreement with Bally Sports Southwest, Alberts said he isn’t concerned about the new model’s ability to close the gap, even with only ad revenue.
The Stars contemplated following a similar model to other teams like the Vegas Golden Knights and Arizona Coyotes, which offer direct-to-consumer streaming for a monthly or season-long fee, but decided it wasn’t necessary.
“I probably wouldn’t be pioneering this if I thought it was going to be significantly different. We’re optimistic,” he said. “The longer we got into it, the more comfortable we felt with the model and our ability to create the necessary revenue from it, too.”
![Dallas Stars announce VICTORY+ streaming app on Monday, July 8, 2024.](https://dmn-dallas-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/v2/CXXWKKBXRFCEBET3PCBENULOEI.jpg?auth=9fe464c09bbe575799b151ea36d23fefff76d426a5d968e3e3879c3a23f1af85&width=830&quality=80)
But in order to account for that revenue loss, Alberts said North Texans need to download the app and use it. To ensure that happens, the team is working to make sure it offers quality content beyond games.
“We’re creating, essentially, a digital television network. We’re going to need other content other than just our games at 7 o’clock at night. That’s part of what our challenge will be moving forward,” he said. “We need a lot of people to download the app, and we need a lot of people to watch, so it’ll be important to make sure our content on this is compelling and the games are, too.”
Alberts said Stars fans can expect a similar viewing experience with Josh Bogorad and Daryl “Razor” Reaugh continuing to call the games on the app-based broadcasts. Jason Walsh, who served as the executive producer at Bally Sports Southwest, has also been brought over to APMC to oversee the production of these new broadcasts.
But the new platform is a trailblazing move in the industry. The Stars are hopeful by solving their previous problems they’ll pave the way for a significant change in sports broadcasting.
“We think that this is going to be great for our fans, but we also ask them to be patient as we work through these changes because this is a monumental change to a business that we’ve all been used to really for the last two to three decades,” Alberts said. “We have to do it, see how it performs, and I think look at it really over two years. If it’s what we thought, we can continue on, and we found a new normal.”
On X/Twitter: @Lassimak