Owners of Roku Internet set-top boxes will soon be able to watch live National Hockey League games as part of a distribution deal announced Wednesday between Roku and the league.
Roku will stream content from the NHL GameCenter Live subscription service, which offers live broadcasts of up to 40 weekly out-of-market hockey games as well as on-demand access to NHL games 48 hours after broadcast, according to Roku officials. Also included in the deal is the NHL Vault, which offers over 500 classic games dating back to the 1960's.
"In order to serve our fans, we are continuing to respond to the convergence of technology, media and consumer behavior," said Perry Cooper, NHL Senior Vice President of Digital Media. "With today's announcement, we are able to deliver NHL GameCenter Live and NHL Vault to Roku's consumer base and significantly broaden the availability of our products to our fans in the United States."
The NHL joins Major League Baseball and the Ultimate Fighting Championship as sport entities streaming live event content via Roku settop boxes. The National Basketball Association offers its NBA Game Time application on Roku players, providing users with video highlights of every game, real-time access to game summaries, complete player statistics and access to news.
"We are excited to add NHL GameCenter Live to our growing list of sports offerings on the Roku platform," said Anthony Wood, founder and CEO of Roku, Inc. "Sports is an important part of our content offerings, and Roku aims to bring sports fans the most expansive and best experience possible to stream games from the internet to their televisions."
The NHL also announced distriution deals for its NHL GameCenter Live for PlayStation 3 video game consoles and through Internet TV software company Boxee.
