ESPN on Monday (May 2) will drop the puck on coverage of its first Stanley Cup Playoffs under parent The Walt Disney Co.’s new seven-year deal with the National Hockey League, featuring 12 playoff games airing on ESPN and ESPN2 over the next three nights. 

All of Disney’s playoff telecasts will air on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC, with Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT and TBS also airing games. On the digital front, ESPN Plus will feature replay coverage of every playoff game and will simulcast all Disney-distributed NHL conference finals and Stanley Cup Finals games live.

Disney will look to build on its regular-season ratings momentum. ESPN and ABC averaged 616,000 viewers across a slate of 26 game telecasts. That’s up from the 391,000 viewers previous rightsholders NBC and NBCSN averaged during the 2021-22 season, according to Sports Business Journal. 

ESPN senior VP of programming and acquisitions Ilan Ben-Hanan spoke to Multichannel News about the network’s multiplatform Stanley Cup Playoffs strategy. Here’s an edited transcript of that conversation.

MCN: Do you feel you're sufficiently serving the hockey fan with your multiplatform approach? 

Ilan Ben-Hanan: I think that we have both qualitative and quantitative data to kind of back that up. Beyond the [linear] ratings, we saw increases in our female demos for our hockey coverage year-over-year from our previous partners, and we saw insane growth in our hockey content consumed on ESPN.com. To be completely transparent, some of that comes with being the rightsholder and having expansive rights in that space. But getting those rights is one thing, using them is another and making sure fans know to come and engage with it is quite another. Going into the playoffs, we’re going to make [ESPN2 weekly NHL studio show] The Point a daily series. We recently launched other shows like The Drop on social platforms YouTube and Twitter, and we launched an NHL TikTok page, which is another prong in our strategy of serving hockey fans where they are. 

MCN: How will your playoff coverage differ from what viewers saw during the regular season? 

IBH: Starting Monday with the NHL Playoffs and the NBA playoffs happening simultaneously — and with ESPN and the Turner Sports networks holding rights to both — it’s almost going to be a square dance for us. Every night if we’re going big with hockey, Turner’s going big with the NBA, and vice versa. If you're a sports fan, you'll be able to find meaningful, do-or-die playoff games on networks that you know in ESPN and ESPN2, TNT and TBS. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we're gonna have 12 playoff games — four games a night with doubleheaders each on ESPN and ESPN2. Turner Sports will have [NHL] games Thursday and Friday, and we’ll each have games on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Every time one of us has hockey, the other will have NBA games. It feels like March Madness, but bigger because it lasts longer and it’s multiple sports categories. 

MCN: What role does the streaming platform play in the postseason with all the NHL postseason games moving to linear?

IBH: All of the live games will be on a linear network somewhere, either on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, TNT or TBS, but the digital component does not go away. There are a lot of things we're doing on the digital side. Every single playoff game is available through archive re-airs on ESPN Plus. In addition, we're gonna be simulcasting the Conference finals and the Stanley Cup Finals on ESPN Plus. In addition, we’re going to have on ESPN Plus Quest for the Stanley Cup, which we produce in partnership with the NHL, that goes behind the scenes and inside the locker room with teams. So yes, the television live games will be on linear television, but the overarching multiplatform approach continues and even enhances when it comes to the playoffs.

MCN: By what metrics will you use to determine whether ESPN’s first year of NHL coverage under its new TV deal is a success? 

IBH: While the ratings are important, that’s not the only metric by which we judge success. Getting to see the usage on ESPN Plus and being innovative in bringing live sports to Hulu, as well as being able to launch these storytelling franchises and studio shows like The Drop and launching on TikTok are all how we measure our success. If it was just a ratings play, we’d be happy with that, too, but that’s not the only metric. I've been beating that drum internally a lot, because I think there are a lot of people who have for years and years thought whether the ratings were up or down was all that matters, but it's not. It’s a much, much broader and more well-rounded story than that. ▪️ 

Big Tech critic Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has scheduled a hearing for March 4 entitled "Dangerous Partners: Big Tech & Beijing" and said Apple and TikTok have declined to participate. 

Hawley is chair of the Judiciary Committee Subcommittee Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee. 

Related: Hawley Introduces Big Tech Security Bill

He pointed out in announcing the hearing that the pair also declined to participate in a similar November hearing on tech ties to China. At that hearing, Hawley read TikTok and Apple the riot act in absentia after the Chinese-backed social media platform and the social media giant were no-shows. 

“This is a troubling pattern of secrecy from Apple and TikTok,” said Hawley, who added that the invitation was sent out several weeks ago. “Doing business with Beijing poses great security risks, especially when it comes to Americans’ personal data. If these companies have nothing to hide, they need to quit stalling and testify before Congress.” 

Hawley says members from law enforcement will be testifying about the risks of tech companies doing business with China. 

The hearing comes as TikTok is under pressure from the other side of the aisle. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on the TSA to ban use of the app, as the Pentagon and DHS have done. “The TSA is to be recognized for its work to engage a variety of stakeholders with airline rules and safety, but it also must acknowledge the ironic risk it’s placing its own agency—and potentially the public—in with its continued use of the China-owned TikTok app," Schumer said last week. 

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) read TikTok and Apple the riot act in absentia Tuesday (Nov. 5) after the Chinese-backed social media platform and the social media giant declined to send representatives to his hearing on Big Tech's data handling, or mishandling, and risks from their connections to China. 

Sen. Hawley began the hearing asking about all the data TikTok is collecting from American users. Hawley warned that the short-form mobile video platform and its massive data collection could be leveraged by the Chinese government against the U.S. 

He then lit into Apple for providing cloud services to China.

Hawley said he wanted to get it on the record that TikTok is collecting "a lot of data," including content, location, contacts, behavioral data on use of the platform, and information from messages and users' phone books. 

He said that was comparable to the "massive data harvesting" machines Google and Facebook. 

And while TikTok said that data is stored in the U.S. and Singapore, Hawley pointed out that TikTok's parent is ByteDance, which is based in China and subject to a 2017 Chinese national intelligence law that requires Chinese companies to cooperate with state intelligence work. 

He said that means TikTok's doors could be opened at any time to the Chinese Communist Party and Beijing could tell parent ByteDance to scoop up data on Americans and give it to Beijing. 

Hearing witness Klon Kitchen, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said that was "without a doubt true." 

Related: Sen. Whitehouse Hammers Social Media

Hawley ticked off some of the ways TikTok or another Chinese platform could abuse all that data, particularly using data to help artificial intelligence train autonomous weapons systems to identify targets--China is reportedly investing heavily in AI tech. 

Asked how the U.S. could ensure that TikTok or other Chinese tech companies weren't Trojan Horses gathering data on Americans and sending it back to the Chinese government. "I'm not sure we can," said Kitchen. He said that anyone who thinks a Chinese company, even if a portion of the company is in the U.S., can say no to the Chinese government, "that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the government in Beijing works." 

Apple, which was another hearing no-show, took it on the chin from both Hawley and Kitchen. 

Hawley said he was concerned about American companies--specifically Apple, which provides cloud services to China--storing both data and the tools to decrypt it in China.  

Kitchen said that while Apple was providing decryption keys for Chinese data stored there, doing so would give China a better understanding of the inner workings of Apple's iCloud accounts and could allow them to collect data "outside of that border." 

Hawley asked Kitchen whether he thought Apple and others were compromising U.S. data security by storing both data and encryption keys. He said, yes, any company complying with China cybersecurity laws was risking not only data security but national security.  

Related: Sen. Hawley Says Big Tech Is Exploiting Digital Tread Mill

Kitchen followed that with his most sobering observation/allegation, one that particularly struck Hawley, who said it summed up the problem: "China imprisons and tortures and kills religious minorities and political dissidents, and it is using compliant companies to do this at scale." 

Neither Tik Tok nor Facebook had responded to a request for comment at press time on the tenor of the hearing or the company's decision not to participate. 

But Vanessa Pappas, GM of TikTok U.S. has posted on the issue, saying: "[W]e store all U.S user data in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore. TikTok’s data centers are located entirely outside of China. Further, we have a dedicated technical team focused on adhering to robust cybersecurity policies, and data privacy and security practices."

Tom Burt, with tech giant Microsoft, has agreed to testify at Tuesday's (Nov. 5) afternoon hearing on “How Corporations and Big Tech Leave Our Data Exposed to Criminals, China, and Other Bad Actors.” 

Not so execs from Apple and Tik Tok, who declined their invitations to testify. According to Hawley's office, though there will be empty chairs at the table for them, a photo-op tactic that has been used before in hearings where tech types failed to show up.

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That is according to the office of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, which said the invitations remain open. 

In addition to Burt, who is corporate VP of customer security and trust, also scheduled to weigh in from the witness table are Kara Frederick, fellow for technology and national security program, Center for a New American Security; William Carter, deputy director and fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Klon Kitchen, senior research fellow, technology, at the Heritage Foundation. 

Hawley: Big Tech is Exploiting Digital Tread Mill 

Hawley, a freshman, has made reining in Big Tech his signature issue, including teaming up with some veterans on both sides of the aisle on legislation toward that end.