Judging by the comments online, this might have been a bigger story this NLL offseason than the Wings and Black Bears folding. At least with those stories, we all saw them coming. Not this one.
The NLL announced on Thursday that they had agreed to a partnership with a company called FloSports for exclusive streaming rights to all NLL games, both regular season and playoffs. That’s right, NLL+, the league’s own broadcast and streaming service, is no more. Considering how much time and work (and presumably money) the league put into NLL+, this was surprising to me.
The reaction from many fans to the news of this partnership was… less than enthusiastic. There were complaints about the broadcast quality but mostly there were complaints about the fact that watching NLL games this season would no longer be free.
I reached out to the league’s Executive VP of Broadcast and Media Joel Feld and the Senior VP of Technology and Broadcast Operations Ed Derse to ask about the reasoning behind this decision. After I talked to Joel and Ed, they (virtually) introduced me to Brian Reinert, VP of Corporate Communications at FloSports, and I had a conversation with him as well. This is a summary of those conversations.
