
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 By Kristian Hern ndez, Senior Editor
Monday, October 14, 2024 - 12:06 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
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 sele
North America Stories
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality
Kate Luvis May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...
29/05/2026
Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
At the Intersection of Music and Dance, an Epic Collaboration Boston Conservatory musicians and dancers found creative parallels in their recent performance o...
29/05/2026
Something fundamental has shifted in how people consume media. Audiences aren't abandoning television or radio content; they're just expanding how, wher...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
The Official Trailer of Physical 100 Italy, on Netflix From Se...
29/05/2026
Experimental HIV vaccine achieves a long-sought goal In a first for the field, all non-human primates given a new series of vaccines generated antibodies capabl...
28/05/2026
FOX Sports' MLB coverage dominated the night at the 47th Annual Sports Emmy ...
28/05/2026
One of the most memorable postseasons in baseball history would have had no memo...
28/05/2026
NBC's Sunday Night Football is among the most-decorated and most-watched pro...
28/05/2026
The 2026 Sports Emmys marked a watershed moment for Prime Video Sports. After bu...
28/05/2026
Hosted by ESPN Senior Writer Ryan McGee, the ceremony honored winners from athletic departments, conference offices, professional networks, production companies...
28/05/2026
Major rights-holders rolled out their 2026 college football slates today, offering a first look at marquee windows, kickoff partners, and conference distributio...
28/05/2026
The 4 Nations Face-Off, an international competition that launched in February 2...
28/05/2026
Soccer is a truly global sport, and, to match the U.S. viewing audience's in...
28/05/2026
The NFL Today, CBS Sports' top-of-the-line NFL studio show, has a storied hi...
28/05/2026
Prime Video is no stranger to innovation, and, within the realm of live streamin...
28/05/2026
The crack of the bat, the pop of the glove, and the cheer of the crowd: those are three prime examples of the glorious sounds fans hear on televised baseball ga...
28/05/2026
Every year, March Madness captivates the entire sports world. Nonstop action, un...
28/05/2026
NBA on NBC was an integral part to live sports production in the 1990s, and, when the league made these media rights available, NBC Sports saw an opportunity to...
28/05/2026
UmpCam is a technological wrinkle that has given fans unprecedented views of wha...
28/05/2026
T-Mobile and the United States Golf Association (USGA) announced a multi-year partnership, making T-Mobile the Official 5G Network Partner of the U.S. Women'...
28/05/2026
By Gina McIntyre
(L-R) Sara Dosa and Andri Sn r Magnason attend the Time and Water premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at Library Center Theatre ...