March to Victory+: A Parent Media Company Starts From Scratch To Give Dallas Stars, Anaheim Ducks a New Broadcast Home

AVOD service features new graphics package, studio shows from PGA of America facility

On Saturday, Oct. 12, Dallas Stars fans watched their favorite hockey team’s first home game, against the New York Islanders, on a new medium: the advertising-based video on demand (AVOD) service named Victory+. The platform also hosts Anaheim Ducks games, with additional over-the-air distribution on KTTV Los Angeles and KCOP-TV Los Angeles. With both teams turning to A Parent Media Company (APMC) for help, the entire production and operations strategy was put together and launched before the start of the 2024-25 NHL season.

“Anytime you’re doing something of the size and scope as this, it’s nerve-wracking,” says Jason Walsh, COO, sports, A Parent Media Company. “We’ve done a few games, and we’ve already far surpassed what we thought we were going to see.”

Victory+ is the new streaming home of the NHL’s Dallas Stars and Anaheim Ducks.

Amid the Turmoil: Diamond Sports Group Turmoil Gets the Wheels Turning

The state of media rights in sports is evolving, but that of regional sports is the most complex. Diamond Sports Group — the company responsible for operating the Bally Sports Regional Networks — is experiencing hard times, forcing professional teams under its umbrella to search for new ways of broadcasting and distribution to audiences. Walsh, who served as VP and executive producer at Bally Sports Southwest for eight years, understood possible scenarios. To see if there was a different avenue for the club, he also tapped into a decade as VP, production and entertainment, for Dallas Stars. In early 2023, Walsh and APMC CEO/President Neil Gruninger sat down with Stars CEO/President Brad Alberts, a longtime investor in APMC, to kick-start conversations. The Victory+ app would come to life just three weeks later.

Extra content available to fans includes postgame interviews, playoff recaps, classic games, and special player features.

This isn’t APMC’s first foray into live streaming and being the home of a brand’s content. The company’s Kidoodle.TV service has presented content from child-focused shows like Paw Patrol, Bubble Guppies, Peppa Pig, and Cocomelon. More recently, Dude Perfect, the Texas-based content company known for mind-bending trick shots, teamed up with APMC in late 2023 to debut its streaming offering.

Despite this history of successful live streaming and the capability of quickly transforming Victory+ from an idea into a plausible broadcast option, Walsh had qualms about the project’s longevity: “To be honest, I was quite skeptical of the situation because throughout my entire career, all I heard was that AVOD was not going to be a viable [financial] solution. Now it’s not going to just be about the teams’ making money but more about their controlling their own destiny.”

Before officially making the leap to APMC in April 2024, Walsh picked Gruninger’s brain, asking every question he had. His initial reservations disappeared after multiple meetings and conversations, but, once the Dallas Stars announced in July 2024 that they were leaving Bally Sports Southwest and the Anaheim Ducks a month later announced its plan to move on from Bally Sports West, the big task was to get everything in order prior to puck drop in October.

The platform’s new graphics package features a Chyron Prime scorebug and a permanent Time on Ice bar.

“We didn’t even have a camera or a microphone at that point,” notes Walsh. “I asked myself, ‘How are we going to produce professional sports in five months?’”

The Avengers Assemble: Execs Join the Company Before Takeoff

Flying the Victory+ plane required a top-tier flight crew. Scrolling through his list of contacts, Walsh went to work on choosing his broadcasting team. The top two selections were Bally Sports Southwest colleagues: VP, Operations, Dawn Esposito and VP, Content Production, Greg Flick, who had served as director of operations and coordinating producer, respectively, at the RSN.

Next, Walsh needed to recruit trusted tech vendors that would bring legitimacy to the broadcasts. Esposito and Flick were onboarded, and, a week later, Walsh and his new team were at NAB 2024 in Las Vegas. Roaming the Las Vegas Convention Center, they saw solutions that caught their eye but ultimately went in a direction incorporating many of the workflows used by their previous employer.

Graphics are easily switched between the Ducks’ Orange County–themed bright orange and the Stars’ Victory Green.

“At the end of the day,” says Walsh, “the broadcast-production [side of the business] wasn’t broken; the economics of the RSN business were broken. We knew we could go with some of the same [vendors] that we’ve always trusted.”

Thus, APMC tapped Mobile TV Group as primary mobile-unit provider, Chyron for the graphics package, Sportradar for data integration, and others to round out its tech portfolio. Finding the partners was the easiest part; more difficult was having traditional-broadcast executives learn the intricacies of modern-day live streaming. The other side of the coin is true: APMC’s live-streaming experts needed to learn live event production with a broadcast lens.

The countdown to puck drop includes photos from the Stars’ 1999 Stanley Cup-winning team.

“We began to teach one another about how we each worked and started to find some really exciting opportunities right away,” Walsh explains. “There are infinite channels with streaming, and, being in Texas, I’ve suggested a Spanish version of the broadcast where fans can select the language they want to watch the game in.”

RSN-Free Production: More Cameras, Stars Studio Show From PGA of Americas Facility

The fledgling relationship between broadcasting and streaming is generating new production ideas, but another factor gives this team more creative freedom: the company is a fully independent entity. This means that the base of each team’s camera complement is at the level it was before DSG filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and there is room for more cameras, depending on the circumstances around the game. As with other localized broadcast companies, such as Scripps Sports’ coverage of the WNBA, broadcast freedom allows Victory+ to produce pre/postgame, and intermission shows from PGA of America’s new headquarters in Frisco, TX.

“We were looking for a studio, and they were looking for partners,” notes Walsh. “We were very excited to work with them since it’s located a short drive north of the Stars’ executive offices.”

Chyron also helped create team-agnostic insert graphics and transitions.

For its first home broadcast of the year, the team opted for an onsite studio desk at American Airlines Arena with host Brian Rea and analyst Brent Severyn, both of whom used to work for Bally Sports Southwest. At the moment, the Ducks don’t have a host studio for host Aly Lozoff and analyst Guy Hebert, but Walsh expects the same for that team.

“Our plan is to expand our content offering in Anaheim once we can get more boots on the ground and with a little more time,” he says. “The onsite truck will initially take on most of the workload to start, and we’ll see how things progress.”

A graphics operator controls the score bug, including integrated live data from the scoreboard, from a PRIME control panel.

Stars games are called by play-by-play announcer Josh Bogorad and analyst Daryl Reaugh. In the truck, the front bench includes director Mark Vittorio and producer Jon Norton. Ducks’ games are called by play-by-play announcer John Ahlers and analyst Brian Hayward, with director Tom Connolle and producer Bob Sipowich at the front bench.

Fan-Friendly Graphics: Chyron Helps Create New Package, Template for ‘Time on Ice’ Bar

Another important aspect of a new broadcast outlet is a dedicated graphics package for on-air elements. This facet of the show required internal artistic collaboration for animations and transitions as well as assistance from Chyron Creative Services for inserts and scorebug. Chyron’s involvement was a result of APMC’s not having the time to develop an entirely new package from scratch. Luckily, some of the graphics provider’s ideas for the platform aligned with a handful of its original mockups for the RSN.

“We asked if we could take some of their ideas and expand off of them,” says Walsh. “Chyron has a relationship with Sportradar, so the integration with data was already there on the backend.”

Chyron’s PRIME platform, commitment to fan engagement and seamless user experience, and affinity for data integration contributed to one of these expansions: a Time on Ice graphic that permanently sits at the bottom of the screen.

“You’ll always know who’s on the ice at all times,” says Walsh. “It’ll show you if someone’s skating over or less than a minute, if they’re coming on late in the shift, and will also expand and contract for power plays.”

The Dallas Stars’ first home game on Victory+ was on Oct. 12 vs. the New York Islanders.

From the Victory+ perspective, the speed of the game necessitated this element. It also was designed to keep the viewing experience as clean as possible by bucking the trend of using the league’s player- and puck-tracking technology.

“With cameras whipping around and players wearing helmets,” Walsh points out, “it’s hard to know who’s on the ice. I feel like [NHL EDGE graphics] interfere with play because it can block the net if a player’s standing in front of the goalie with their name over their head.”

To optimize presentation and maintain one brand identity, the Stars and Ducks share the basic elements of the graphics package. This allows easily the Ducks’ Orange County–themed bright orange to be swapped out for the Stars’ Victory Green and allows the graphics to adapt to the colors of the Ducks’ local affiliates.

Transmission Plans: Ducks’ Over-the-Air Portion Features Unusual Wrinkle

For the day-to-day crew in the production truck, execution and the working environment are comparable to how games were done with the RSN model. One major difference between the two NHL franchises is that the Stars are solely direct-to-consumer on Victory+ but the Ducks also have an over-the-air (OTA) deal for 59 games on KTTV and six on KCOP-TV. This difference spurred a personalized transmission plan for OTA distribution.

For Dallas, a software program on a laptop triggers commercial breaks since there wasn’t a need for a master-control room. The final program feed and a backup feed are transmitted to the AWS cloud and into the Stars’ system, where breaks are managed by a single operator. The workflow is duplicated for Victory+ Ducks productions, but, for the 65 OTA games, the master-control room taps into the Victory+ program feed and integrates sponsorship elements for commercials. The local broadcaster’s master-control room listens to the Victory+ producer to time out these breaks. This dual workflow was first deployed for an away game on Saturday, Oct. 12 vs. the San Jose Sharks.

The Stars’ studio show was onsite at American Airlines Arena Oct. 12 but will broadcast from PGA of America’s facility in Frisco, TX, during the season.

On the business side, this production wrinkle was added to the Ducks’ broadcast plans when their contract with DSG expired at the end of the 2023-24 NHL season. APMC reached out immediately to the club, and, given Walsh’s friendship with Ducks President Aaron Teats during Teats’s time on the club’s production side from 1994 to 2007, Victory+ had the upper hand.

“They looked at all different possibilities and had options to weigh,” says Walsh. “We presented our case, and they felt it was important to produce a significant number of over-the-air games as well as having a digital platform.”

Ability To Do More: Workflow Provides Better Resolution, Adds Moments for Interactivity

The live-stream nature of the offering has Immediate benefits. Previously, Ducks and Stars games were broadcast in 720p, but Victory+ has produced in 1080i from the beginning. Talks have already started on pushing these broadcasts to 1080p HDR and 4K in the future. Improved image quality, along with the fact that the crew would be launching an official NHL broadcast without much rehearsal time, was put to the test during the Stars’ first preseason game, on Saturday, Sept. 21 vs. the St. Louis Blues.

The Ducks’ commentary team comprises Aly Lozoff and Guy Hebert on the studio show and John Ahlers and analyst Brian Hayward on the call.

“I wasn’t nervous about our ability to do production, but I was nervous about everything flowing correctly and that fans didn’t have problems finding our game [on Victory+],” says Walsh. “There ended up being no issues. We had a lot of positivity, our commercial loads and ad tech worked great, and everybody saw the live stream. And I was shocked by the number of people that wanted to watch the first preseason game on a college football Saturday night.”

In addition to better resolution, interactivity is one of the streaming platform’s visions for all live broadcasts — an advantage that direct-to-consumer has over linear broadcasts. “Our goal with a five-month lead-time was to just get on the air,” notes Walsh, “but a number of plans for interactive features are being hatched. As we get about halfway into the season and look toward the playoffs, we want to figure out how we can make these broadcasts bigger and better.”

Specific plans aren’t set in stone, but concepts around fantasy sports, live sports betting, and heightened points of gamification are definitely in the mix.

A New Frontier: Infrastructure Allows Further Team Expansion, Broadcast Flexibility

The hard work in the first year of Victory+ sets the streaming platform up for future success. As the dominos continue to fall in the RSN business and with Victory+ being team-agnostic, the door is open for other NHL teams or organizations from other leagues. It also helps that APMC has bolstered its staff to provide everything in-house. VP/Executive Producer John Stroh, Senior Content Producer AJ Viti, Video Producer Josh Curry, Chief Engineer Corbin Perkins, and Operations Director Kathryn Alvarado have recently joined the team.

Stars games will be called by Josh Bogorad and Daryl Reaugh this year.

“One of the differentiators is that we’re an end-to-end service,” says Walsh. “We can stream your games and handle your productions because we have all of the creative content in place.”

Without a large blueprint to work from and lots of varied elements to account for, there was a lot of room for error for the crew at APMC and the launch of Victory+. Fortunately, an amalgamation of veteran broadcast professionals, new-age thinking from a streaming perspective, and reliable minds on the tech front has brought this strategy together quite nicely.

“The camaraderie with our group has really been coming together,” says Walsh. “We have so many smart people that are so fun to work with. I’m excited to see where we go, because this is just the beginning.”

SVG’s Editorial Director, U.S., Jason Dachman contributed to this article.

Victory+ will host five games this week: San Jose Shark vs. Dallas Stars on Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 8 p.m. ET; Utah Hockey Club vs. Anaheim Ducks on Wednesday, Oct. 16 at 10 p.m.; Stars vs. Washington Capitals on Thursday, Oct. 17 at 7 p.m.; Ducks vs. Colorado Avalanche on Friday, Oct. 18 at 9 p.m.; and Edmonton Oilers vs. Stars on Saturday, Oct. 19 at 4 p.m.