The Seattle Kraken will have a new TV broadcast home for the foreseeable future, the team announced Thursday morning. After three seasons with ROOT Sports as the flagship television network for the team, the Kraken will partner with TEGNA (KING 5 and KONG) in a “multi-year agreement.” All games that haven’t been picked up for national coverage will be viewable on KONG, and a handful of games will also be simulcast on KING 5.
Additionally, the team has entered into a new first-of-its-kind partnership with Prime Video, which will allow streaming of all locally broadcasted games to Prime members for no additional cost.
These new deals should make games more accessible for local viewers, who will now be able to watch Kraken hockey “over the air,” even without a cable subscription (a simple cheap antenna should get you access to both KING 5 and KONG), or with a more economical streaming option than before.
“ROOT has been a terrific partner for us; we have appreciated their support as we determined our broadcast plans moving forward,” said Kraken owner, Sam Holloway in a press release. “Today’s announcement is a game changer for our fans. Our goal is to increase the ways they can watch our games – whether they’re cheering us on at home or on the go. To have both TEGNA and Prime Video as trusted partners is a dream come true. I can’t wait for more fans to fall in love with Kraken hockey.”
The viewing area for both the over-the-air option and the streaming option will cover Washington, Oregon, and Alaska (KGW in Portland and KREM in Spokane will carry the games, since KONG and KING 5 are not readily available in those markets).
Why move away from ROOT?
The broadcast team at ROOT did a fantastic job. We’ve watched plenty of local broadcasts from other markets, and we can honestly say (biases aside) that the Kraken broadcast has been one of, if not the best in the business over the past three seasons.
But there were barriers for fans or potential fans to access games on TV, and limited streaming options made games on ROOT difficult to find without some sort of significant financial investment from viewers.
The content wasn’t the issue. The issue was simply that for fans to watch ROOT, they not only needed a cable subscription like Xfinity, they also got an added kick recently of having to pay even more for an elevated tier to access the sports network.
For those that had switched out of cable, Fubo TV was a fine solution, but to get ROOT, “cord cutters” still had to pay north of $100 per month.
Now, there are more economical (and even free) options available to viewers, a huge win for Kraken fans.
What’s happening with the broadcast team?
Up to now, games have been produced mostly by ROOT employees and/or contractors, with some Kraken personnel factoring in. Moving forward, production of the games will not be handed over to TEGNA, though their employees will certainly be involved.
Instead, a lot of the production will now be done “in house” by the Kraken, meaning more of the individuals working on the show will be team employees, and they will use some of TEGNA’s existing infrastructure. This is a shift from how things were being done previously and (we assume) gives the team a bit more control over branding, graphics, visuals, etc.
The difficult piece here is that there are good people at ROOT who did a great job on broadcasts for three seasons that are now facing uncertainty. On the flipside, we wouldn’t be surprised to see the Kraken hire some of these individuals who have already been part of the show.
As for the on-air broadcast team, all the Kraken employees that you became accustomed to seeing will be around next season. So, we expect John Forslund, Eddie Olczyk, JT Brown, Alison Lukan, and Nick Olczyk to continue participating in 2024-25.
Other on-air personalities that appeared on games previously are ROOT employees, including Piper Shaw. Currently, there isn’t much that we can share on this front.
Good news for Kraken fans
Whichever way you slice it, this is a positive move for Kraken fans. Our hope is that it will truly allow the team to reach more new fans and get hooks into more casual fans to turn them into diehards. The franchise has done a solid job of building its brand locally, but we have wondered about the true reach beyond the Seattle metro area. This is a huge shift that should really help on this front.
Darren Brown
Darren Brown is the Chief Content Officer at soundofhockey.com and the host of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast. He is a member of the PHWA and is also usually SOH’s Twitter intern (but please pretend you don’t know that). Follow him @DarrenFunBrown and @sound_hockey or email darren@soundofhockey.com.