The headline on the press release highlights that the games will be broadcast on Fox 50 (WRAZ 50.1) on Monday, November 25 and WRAL-TV (5.1) on Friday, November 29, but the games will actually be carried on 8 markets across North and South Carolina on Monday and 9 markets on Friday. Those stations are:
Monday, November 25, 7 PM vs. Dallas Stars
Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville, NC - WRAZ 50.1
Charlotte, NC – WBTV 3.2
Greenville-New Bern, NC – WITN 7.2
Columbia, SC – WPAM 18.1 and WIS 10.4
Wilmington, NC – WILM 10.1
Charleston, SC – WZCH 35.3 and WCSC 5.7
Greenville and Spartanburg, SC – WHNS 21.2
Myrtle Beach, SC – WMBF 32.3
Friday, November 29, 3PM vs. Florida Panthers
Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville, NC - WRAL 5.1
Charlotte, NC – WBTV 3.2
Greenville-New Bern, NC – WITN 7.2
Columbia, SC – WPAM 18.1 and WIS 10.4
Greensboro, NC – WCWG 20.1
Wilmington, NC – WILM 10.1
Charleston, SC – WZCH 35.3 and WCSC 5.7
Greenville and Spartanburg, SC – WHNS 21.2
Myrtle Beach, SC – WMBF 32.3
Note that outside of the Triangle many of these games will not be on the primary channel for that TV station. If you use an antenna for local TV you should be fine, but if you use another service you’ll want to make sure that these secondary channels are included. The cable company might include them, but satellite or internet streaming services like YouTube TV might not.
What does this mean?
I think this is an interesting development. It could be testing the waters for the Hurricanes to drop Bally FanDuel Sports Network altogether, or at the very least simulcast more games to reach a wider audience.
As a brief background, for many years the Hurricanes games were broadcast on Fox Sports Carolinas/Fox Sports South. Fox owned a number of these small networks around the country, known as Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) (Comcast and others own similar RSNs around the country). These channels are only shown on cable or satellite systems. The goal for any cable channel is to get included in a base tier with the cable company because they get paid a fee for however many subscribers the cable company has. It’s better to get a lower fee on the base tier (perhaps $0.05 per subscriber) than a higher fee on a specialty tier such as a Sports tier, because far fewer subscribers will pay for the higher tier.
A few years ago Disney bought Fox. Because Disney already owns ESPN and its family of networks, they were forced to sell off the Fox Sports Networks out of antitrust concerns. The RSNs were bought by Sinclair Broadcasting (owner of a large number of local TV stations) and later joined by Allen Media Group (owner of The Weather Channel, among other properties) in a joint venture named Diamond Sports Group. The networks were bought for almost $10 Billion and Sinclair took on a lot of debt to finance the purchase. The plan seemed to be that they would significantly raise fees for their networks, but most pay TV services balked and dropped them entirely. The group has been hemorrhaging cash ever since and has been in bankruptcy proceedings since March 2023. Many teams have terminated their contracts with Diamond because they have not been paid and at least one network (for Arizona teams) has shut down entirely because they had no more teams. Diamond Sports Group has themselves sued parent company Sinclair claiming financial mismanagement.
The entire network seems to be in danger of folding. Last month Diamond ended their naming rights deal with Bally early and launched a new deal with FanDuel. The deal seemed to give the network some additional cash and includes an option for FanDuel to take a 5% ownership stake, but only if Diamond successfully exits bankruptcy. Several NHL and NBA teams have announced long-term contracts with Diamond, but only if they exit bankruptcy. Otherwise those contracts will terminate after this season. Diamond lost 4 MLB teams this offseason while announcing new agreements with 4 other teams.
Diamond seems to be hoping their direct-to-consumer streaming service will help with profitability, but at $20/month I’m not sure they’ll get there. I subscribed to it myself last year and it was okay, but haven’t started again this season for budget reasons, especially not seeing the point in paying for the service with so many late games on the west coast at the start of the season.
Regardless of whether FanDuel Sports Network continues to exist I’m sure the Hurricanes broadcasts will continue in some form. The broadcasts are actually produced by the Hurricanes and sold to Diamond, using Diamond’s branding. They will certainly continue somewhere. Longtime fans may remember in early years many of the games were broadcast locally on WKFT-TV 40. WRAL parent Capitol Broadcasting has a long history of broadcasting local sports (it sounds like WRAL preempting CBS primetime shows for ACC basketball was a key reason in why CBS left WRAL for channel 17 and WRAL took the NBC affiliation). Gray Television also owns many of the stations that will be carrying these games and they have signed deals in other markets with some teams that have left Diamond.
We might see some very interesting changes at the end of this season!