The Kraken gambled by creating their own TV network. Here’s how it’s paying off.

SEATTLE — Voices fill the production truck parked behind Climate Pledge Arena, just back from undergoing maintenance. Kraken play-by-play man John Forslund and color commentator Eddie Olczyk are in peak form, their banter emanating from the arena.

The broadcast crew in the truck talks through finding, finally, the replay Olczyk is looking for without him ever really indicating what he wants to show. Lightly teases Forslund for his food takes and longtime Chicago broadcaster Olczyk for his perceived Blackhawks bias. Discusses whether the Kraken have ever won a game 1-0 (no), responds to the on-air suggestion that defenseman Ryker Evans had to be among the three stars of the night (he wasn’t) and the suggestion that whoever excludes him deserves to have their “license” revoked (unconfirmed at press time).

The graphics are clean, the stats inventive, the new ideas marinating. It’s a work in progress, and it had better work.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go.

Kraken Hockey Network launched this fall, removing a barrier of entry for potential, frustrated viewers. The NHL’s newest franchise assembled an enviable broadcast team to teach the Seattle market about hockey, but few students were consistently showing up, hindered, at least in part, by rising costs.

So the Kraken organization took a gamble on a more hands-on approach.

“We’re kind of meeting fans where they are,” KHN producer Ryan Schaber said. “The old model of RSNs (regional sports networks) doesn’t necessarily do that anymore. That way of consuming television is rapidly falling by the wayside.”

‘There’s more fans out there’

It was a scary undertaking, just a few seasons in. Higher viewership, usually, but less revenue. Going over the air makes the new network heavily dependent on advertising. If they can reach more fans, from Seattle to Montana to Alaska, the hope is merchandise sales and sponsorships will rise as well.

That first part, at least, is working. According to the team, KHN is averaging 50,000 viewers per game through October and November. That’s when viewership numbers are usually lower, and despite multiple 4 p.m. starts from games on the east coast, competition from the Seahawks, election night and Halloween.

A 6-4 win against the Philadelphia Flyers on Oct. 17, which was the first game aired on KING 5, reached over 100,000 households.

For reference, with the team coming off a playoff run, last season’s first eight games on ROOT Sports averaged 13,781 viewers and a 0.7 rating. The previous year the Kraken in October averaged 15,103 viewers and the same 0.7 rating on ROOT over nine games, in a metro area of more than 3 million.

In further good news, KING 5 and KONG general manager Christy Moreno said the new arrangement was bringing in almost five times the audience from pre- and postgame shows.

“We thought, there’s more fans out there than might be showing up right now,” Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke said. “We could just sense it, and if we give it to them the way they want it, they’re going to be there. We’re still very early on, but it’s happened.

“We basically said we don’t know how this is going to turn out, but we’ve got to keep going on this journey, and we’ve got to figure this out.”

With the RSN model, fans could pay to watch most games on their favorite team’s schedule. That system was profitable for a time. Cord-cutting, or canceling subscriptions to multichannel television services, changed the industry scenery, among other factors.

Then the Kraken were pushed to the highest-pay tier on Comcast just before the 2023-24 season opener. That spring, the Kraken formally parted ways with ROOT Sports three years into a five-year deal and struck out on their own, becoming the third NHL team to test an over-the-air format.

Fans clamored for a cheaper, simpler option. It doesn’t get much simpler than a $10 antenna, which picks up KING and KONG just fine in some areas. A network of Tegna-owned stations put the Kraken on 11 stations in five states, 12 if they make the playoffs.

In Washington, Alaska and Oregon, Amazon Prime automatically included non-nationally televised Kraken games without an add-on. The new streaming deal was the first between an NHL team and Amazon. CEO Andy Jassy is a Kraken minority owner.

A different approach

Schaber joined ROOT Sports when the Kraken launched following a long stint with the Sounders. For three years, he helped produce a hockey show on a baseball network and was proud of it.

The Kraken were paid an annual TV rights fee by ROOT, said to be within the standard $15 million-$30 million for NHL teams. Low viewership made it harder for ROOT to recoup its yearly investment. The Kraken, anxious to draw in more fans, weren’t content with the status quo.

The teams were facing some of the same woes, but different economic models. Over a year ago, Leiweke said, Kraken upper management started to realize there was “real pressure” on these regional channels.

“The Mariners are so classy. They were the last ones to sort of express it,” he said. “But we could look around.

“ROOT was a great first home, but we knew we had to figure things out.”

ROOT is credited with setting the fledgling NHL team up for success. By mutual agreement, the deal was terminated two years early. Leiweke said they had the full support of ownership to aim higher in growing its fan base.

Local television partners KING 5 and KONG could help them boost the signal. Advertisers and sponsors were thrilled with the addition. Moreno called it a perfect marriage.

“We knew as broadcasters that we would be able to expand the Kraken reach by two and a half, three times,” Moreno said. “And we’re delivering on that.”

While still employed by ROOT, Schaber was asked, essentially: What if the Kraken did the Kraken?

As far as graphics, he and KHN director Patrick Brown decided to start with the “score bug,” which is the graphic that displays the score during game action, then build out. Famed action-movie producer and team co-owner Jerry Bruckheimer put in his two cents, contributing to the look and sound of the production.

“If Jerry Bruckheimer has an opinion, you want to listen to it,” Schaber said.

Having been in the business a while, they’d built the relationships needed to keep or acquire the necessary equipment. For home games, the crew deploys 13 operated cameras, five robotics and five slo-mo capable cameras.

“We’re seeing a lot of other regionals starting to scale back, to save some money,” Schaber said. “We’ve been given the green light to maintain what we have, which is already a big production, and we’ve even enhanced it a little bit more. There’s a drive to innovate and continue pushing.”

Seeking that tune that lets you know, from the kitchen, that the Kraken are on in the living room, they repurposed an epic score. Years before, Bruckheimer had called in a favor with Oscar- and Grammy-winning composer Hans Zimmer, who went on to create an eight-minute original composition for the Kraken. It once featured heavily into the in-game presentation.

Why not dust that thing off? KHN remixed it, so to speak, with contributions from Seattle-based EDM duo Odesza and a track created by a member of the former Red Alert, the Kraken’s former marching band.

Forslund was also part of the think tank, of course.

“They don’t have to include me,” he said. “I’m the play-by-play guy. I just basically need to do my job.

“But they’ve asked for opinions. How I view the game, how I want to portray the game. And for someone that’s been in this racket for 40 years, that doesn’t get asked. I really, really appreciate that fact.”

This energized him.

“It came at a great time in my career, because I needed it,” Forslund said. “To reconnect with a team and come to a market where I think we’re slowly building something really great.”

He’s joined by Olczyk, recognizable thanks to his national broadcasting duties, plus JT Brown, Alison Lukan and Piper Shaw. To round out the crew, SportsCenter anchor Linda Cohn and radio show host Ian Furness were brought on as KHN hosts.

New Kraken coach Dan Bylsma threw out some ideas too. He volunteered to be mic’d up on the bench. They tried it in the preseason but ran into sound issues. That one’s on the back burner for now. He also suggested mic’ing up the backup goaltender.

In the past, players coming off the ice would pant out a quick interview during intermissions. Schaber asked if Bylsma would be amenable to having his assistant coaches share those duties, on rotating basis, during the second period break. Jessica Campbell, the first woman hired as a full-time NHL assistant coach, got more reach as a result.

“They have great perspectives, and they’re actively coaching these guys every single day,” Schaber explained.

A greater trend

This is a transitional period of TV, with experimentation but no perfect solutions.

Cable companies began cutting RSN content from basic bundling, likely speeding up the model’s decline. Bankruptcies and early-deal terminations between teams and RSN entities accelerated. Diamond Sports Group, which operates the Bally Sports networks, had its restructuring plan approved last week by a Texas judge, clearing the way for the company to exit bankruptcy. More than a dozen teams departed in the meantime.

There was an NHL blueprint for the Kraken, at least — the Vegas Golden Knights, the most recent expansion team until Seattle came along, saw viewership boom immediately after signing with the E.W. Scripps Company’s new sports division for the 2023-24 season. According to a company release, October ratings were up 135% compared to ESPN and TNT telecasts the previous season and drew an average 8.5 household rating in Las Vegas. Those Golden Knights numbers included a championship banner raising on opening night.

Elsewhere in the Pacific Division, the Kraken numbers disappointed longtime NHL play-by-play man Forslund to a degree.

“But I also understood why,” he said.

No matter who tuned in, he gave it his all. In The Athletic’s annual broadcast rankings, voted on by fans and released in June, the Kraken were second-best in the NHL.

“We were doing a good job, but nobody was watching it,” Forslund said, referencing the aforementioned reasons — cord cutting, cost, etc.

“And then, unless you’re really, really good — which we only were for one season — it’s too easy for fans to say, ‘No, I’m not going to go out of my way to watch.’ "

Now, he says, they’ve eliminated the excuses.

This season, Scripps brought on the Florida Panthers and retained its association with the brand-new Utah Hockey Club, formerly the over-the-air Arizona Coyotes. The Dallas Stars took their media rights to an in-house streaming platform. Florida and Dallas parted ways with Bally Sports networks.

At the eleventh hour — Oct. 1, a week before the NHL season launched — the Chicago Blackhawks, Bulls and White Sox were rehomed to Chicago Sports Network, a subscription streaming service. Games are also available via basic antenna.

“Is it sustainable? I think we’ll see,” Schaber said. “But this business has reinvented itself so many times, and it’s kind of gone full circle back to where it started.

“For now, fans can rejoice in the fact that they can watch their team, every single time, just about anywhere.”