Seattle Kraken's Ryan Schaber, Patrick Brown Launch the Kraken Hockey Network
47m
This has been the fall of several professional franchises taking their regional live game productions and distribution in-house. Among them is the NHL's Seattle Kraken which, in September, launched the Kraken Hockey Network.
Through this new division, the team can now deliver live games to a massive chunk of potential viewers on over-the-air television and streaming in Washington, Oregon, and Alaska. The franchise turned to familiar faces to produce this robust lineup of games, bringing on the same producer and director from the team's days on ROOT Sports Northwest: Ryan Schaber and Patrick Brown.
What has also remained consistent is that the Kraken deliver one of the biggest regional game productions in the league. For home games, the crew deploys 13 operated cameras and boasts a whopping five robotics and five super slo-mo-capable cameras.
In this exclusive interview, Schaber and Brown offer in-depth breakdown of the production resources and storytelling strategies that go into a Kraken live game broadcast, what it took to establish the Kraken Hockey Network and get all of the pieces in place over just one offseason, and offer a look ahead at what's to come.
NOTE: In the Greater Seattle area, Kraken games are broadcast on over-the-air television (KING 5, KONG, and select TEGNA, Gray, Cox and Morgan Murphy TV stations) while also available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. For fans outside of the Seattle region, Kraken partner TEGNA, which owns and operates the local stations, will air games on KGW in Portland and KREM in Spokane, totaling nearly 4 million households in Seattle/Portland/Spokane. KHN has added affiliates in Juneau (KYEX) and Anchorage (KAUU) along with one in Yakima (KAPP-KVEW, ABC affiliate) and another in Eugene (KEVU-KLSR).