With the Kings expected to officially open training camp at Toyota Sports Performance Center on Thursday, the hockey news — and on-ice action — is going to start coming in at a rather rapid-fire pace. Building on some of the streaming news we shared last week, let’s quickly dig into things on that front just a little further.
2026 Preseason Schedule
The first three games below will all be streamed for free on SLVR (which is available on Amazon Prime, and several other places). They’ll also be available on the Kings team website. We wrote more about the entire SLVR situation here last week.
As for the final preseason game, coming up on Sept. 26 at 1pm, that game will air on ABTV — this season’s primary home for Kings games. We wrote more about ABTV, how/why the team is on that channel and more, see here.
Saturday, Sept. 19 at 6pm
Empire Classic
Kings vs. Vegas
at Toyota Arena in Ontario
Tuesday, Sept. 22 at 7pm
Kings vs. Utah
at Crypto.com Arena in DTLA
Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 7pm
Kings vs. Anaheim
at Honda Center in Anaheim
Saturday, Sept. 26 at 1pm
Kings vs. Anaheim
at Crypto.com Arena in DTLA
2026-27 Regular Season Streaming Notes
A much larger topic that most fans are interested in is, ‘Where can I watch Kings regular-season games starting in a few weeks?’
We’ve covered this topic several times over the past few months, yet we also understand it may feel like a moving target at times, so let’s try to recap and level set for just a quick minute.
Essentially, there are two types of viewers, and we’ll attempt to summarize each for simplicity.
Traditional Cable/Satellite Viewers
Everything in this article applies to viewers in the local SoCal market. Fans outside the greater Los Angeles TV market will need to access the NHL’s out-of-market package. This is the same for all major sports, including the NFL’s Sunday Ticket option.
Locally, Kings games will appear on ABTV this season, in the final year of a multi-year contract between the two sides. What happens next summer is still very much a work in progress. However, here’s the good news — the Kings are going to air the bulk of their 2026-27 regular-season games on basically the same channel they’ve been on for 30+ years — it’s just gone through another re-brand, in terms of the name.
What was once Prime Ticket, then Fox Sports West, Bally Sports, and more recently FanDuel Sports, is now ABTV due to the channel being purchased by the Angels earlier this year. For example, if you’ve watched Kings games on DirecTV on channel 692 for years and years, that’s where you’ll find them again most nights.
TV/Satellite can be broken down into three buckets, we’ll call it the 12 + 60 + 12 buckets for simple math. That’s a total of 84 regular-season games.
The Kings will have 12 games on national TV (ESPN/TNT), and those games have already been scheduled, see here.
The middle bucket, we’ll call that 60 games, will be on ABTV.
Then, the remaining 12 games will appear on over-the-air (OTA) television. For example, last year games appeared on KCAL. Which OTA provider will air Kings games this year and exactly how many games is still being worked out. ABTV takes the lead on this, as they own the local rights. Thus, the Kings don’t actually make these decisions. Note, the number ’12’ we’re using here is an approximate just to make things easy to understand. If it’s actually eight games, then the other four would simply air on ABTV.
Cord Cutters and Streamers
Again, everything here is for local viewers.
Reading the section above is important because it lays the groundwork for streaming. The ‘owners’ of the broadcast rights basically own the streaming rights too. Therefore, the same 12 + 60 + 12 (84 regular-season games) formula works for streaming too.
The 12 national games owned by ESPN/TNT will be available via their corresponding streams.
The 60 games on ABTV will be carried by their streaming option. More on that in just a minute.
And the other 12 games that will be broadcast via an OTA partner are the regular-season games that will be streamed on SLVR.
Now, back to the bulk of games.
As we understand things, an announcement is coming very soon on where ABTV plans to stream their games for the 2026-27 Kings season. They are not expected to have a standalone app. Instead, it sounds like they’ll be partnering with a very well-known player in the sports streaming landscape. If the deal we’ve been hearing about comes together, it’s with a provider that already has major deals in place with MLB, NHL and NBA teams. It’s not a startup operation.
Wrapping it All Up
In summary — and we hope this helps clarify some things — fragmentation occurs because the rights to games aren’t sold as an 84-game package. There are around 12 national games (ESPN/TNT) and then around 74 local market games. Streaming rights for national games are owned by the national channel.
The majority of those 74 local market games in LA are sold to a traditional cable channel (ABTV, in this case). They also own the streaming rights to those same games.
However, to help broaden their reach to more fans, the Kings hold back about 8-12 games from that 74-game group. They want those to air on over the air (OTA) TV channels. Like KCAL in years past. And, of course, then the streaming rights for those same games then come into play.
So, the fragmentation doesn’t occur to frustrate fans. It’s somewhat by design — to maximize the number of people who can ultimately see games. All four of the major sports leagues do this.
Whether it’s TV or streaming, think of it sort of the same way… Ballpark, 12 national games + 60 local cable games + 12 OTA games.
If you’re a cord cutter (i.e., streaming only), it’s the same set up… three groups of around 12 + 60 + 10.
Hope that helps.
MORE LA KINGS NEWS:
Salary Cap Crunch: Where Kings Stand Entering 2026 Offseason, Plus Likely Roster Moves
Prepping for This Weekend’s Rookie Faceoff with Kings GM Ken Holland
Note to webmasters/reporters: When recapping news or interviews from this site please remember to include a link to www.MayorsManor.com
Leave a Reply