Anaheim Ducks reportedly intend to leave Victory+ streaming platform
· Yahoo Sports
Victory+ picked a bad Wednesday to have a bad Wednesday.
The Ducks are the second team to walk away from the streaming platform within hours, and the exit comes with two years still remaining on Anaheim’s contract.
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According to a report from Sports Business Journal’s Alex Silverman, the Ducks have notified Victory+ – who has reportedly fallen behind on rights payments owed to multiple partners in recent months — of their intent to terminate the deal and are now working to line up a new direct-to-consumer partner ahead of the 2026-27 season.
The move comes just hours after the Texas Rangers announced they were leaving Victory+ in the middle of the current MLB season, switching to a new platform called BZZR beginning Friday. The Ducks appear to be working a longer runway toward next season, with no named replacement yet, giving Anaheim more room to weigh its options.
One of those options is already half in place. The team’s local Fox affiliate currently carries up to 65 Ducks games over the air, an arrangement the club could look to expand into a full local package the way the Predators did with Scripps earlier this year after losing their spot on a FanDuel-branded regional network. A streaming component is still reportedly part of the Ducks’ plan alongside any over-the-air deal, which could point them toward the NHL’s own infrastructure rather than another third-party platform.
Commissioner Gary Bettman said in March that while the league has no interest in centralizing local rights the way MLB and the NBA are pursuing, it has built out production and distribution capabilities that any club needing assistance can lean on. Which teams, if any, will use that option for 2026-27 hasn’t been announced, and the NHL’s hands-off posture stands in contrast to the NBA, which is reportedly targeting a fully centralized local streaming hub, with YouTube seen as the frontrunner to host it, by 2027-28.
The collapse of Main Street Sports Group left 13 NBA teams and six NHL clubs, the Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets, Red Detroit Red Wings, Minnesota Wild, Nashville Predators, and St. Louis Blues, searching for new homes after FanDuel’s regional networks wound down, with most of the NHL group opting for over-the-air deals rather than streaming-first solutions. Victory+ has also been positioned as a possible landing spot for some of the displaced NBA teams, though it hasn’t closed a deal with any of them. Per SBJ, potential agreements with the Orlando Magic, Charlotte Hornets, and Minnesota Timberwolves all fell through earlier this year after Victory+ failed to secure additional financing.
The rest of Victory+’s book of business remains intact for now. The Dallas Stars are still the platform’s only NHL partner with actual equity in the business, alongside the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream and Minnesota Lynx, a league-wide NWSL agreement, and League One Volleyball. Anaheim had been with Victory+ since leaving Bally Sports in 2024, making it one of the platform’s earlier and more established wins before Wednesday.
Losing two teams in a single day won’t sink Victory+ on its own, but combined with a stalled NBA sales pitch and reports of missed payments, it hasn’t exactly helped its case as a platform trying to establish itself as a stable option in a local rights market most teams are still figuring out how to leave behind.
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