In addition to what they may invest in tickets, parking and that Kirill Kaprizov replica sweater for the coming season, Minnesota Wild fans can add $100 to their winter budget if they want to watch the team’s games from home.
On Wednesday, the NHL announced that the Wild are among six U.S. NHL teams moving their games to Prime Video beginning next month when the puck drops on the 2026-27 season.
Undated courtesy photo, circa July 2026, of Minnesota Wild chief revenue officer and executive vice president Mitch Helgerson. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Wild)
As part of the multi-year pact signed with the streaming video branch of online retail giant Amazon, fans may purchase a monthly subscription to the service for $19.99 or a yearly subscription for $99.99. Prime Video will stream all Wild games that are not otherwise nationally televised and will be the team’s home for first round NHL playoff coverage.
“The technology should enable a pretty good fan experience in watching our games is our expectation with Amazon,” Wild chief revenue officer Mitch Helgerson said Wednesday in a Zoom interview with the local media. “There’s so many different streaming platform providers out there. They’re not all as easy to find as Amazon. (It’s) built into so many different devices and streaming platforms and remote controls.”
Similar to Twins.TV, the video home of Minnesota’s pro baseball team since they moved away from a long-term relationship with struggling regional sports networks, the hockey team will launch Wild+, a team-owned and operated multimedia network this fall.
According to a press release from the Wild, the new network will allow games to be viewed via Prime Video, cable, satellite and over-the-air TV. Twins.TV is currently available as part of some satellite and cable packages throughout the region. Helgerson said he expects the same, eventually, from Wild+ and that carriage agreements are currently being negotiated.
Additional details on where to find the broadcasts will be provided sometime between now and the Wild’s regular-season opener on Oct. 1 in Nashville.
“As soon as we have that information, we’ll put that out,” Helgerson said. “But we anticipate DirecTV and anywhere that you could have gotten … the Wild in the past, it’s our intention to make sure you are able to see Wild games this year on the same provider on the same tier.”
A monthly or yearly subscription for Wild+ will an additional charge regardless of whether someone already has an Amazon Prime membership.
The Wild also have 17 games scheduled for national television this season: two on ABC, five on ESPN, three on ESPN+, and seven on TNT.
The broadcast team on Wild+ will be familiar to Minnesota hockey fans, with play–by-play announcer Anthony LaPanta, lead analyst Ryan Carter and sideline reporter Kevin Gorg, as well as studio hosts Katie Storm and Wes Walz, moving over from their similar roles at FanDuel Sports. Former NHL players Alex Stalock and Lou Nanne also will occasionally serve as analysts.
“We’re blessed in our market to have not just good on-air talent, but good production people, and we’re trying to keep as many of those good people together as we could,” Helgerson said, adding that the team is excited about the opportunity to produce its own games without the “middle person” of a regional sports network.
Helgerson acknowledged there is some “subscription fatigue” among fans getting accustomed to teams joining what can be a confusing, and costly, move to streaming platforms.
Regional sports networks — variously known as Midwest Sports Channel, Fox Sports North, FSN North, Bally Sports North and more recently FanDuel Sports Network — were once was a kind of one-stop shop for Minnesota sports television. Fans now may have to pay multiple different platforms separately to view the Twins, Wild, Timberwolves, Gophers and other teams in the region.
“I think that’s the downside of all of this,” Helgerson said. “I think if we all had the ideal scenario, we would all still be able to do that. But the world has changed, and I think the erosion of the old linear model on cable and satellites, we all know, is just going away.”
Prime Video can be streamed on televisions, smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. The outlet, already a primary source of TV coverage for the NHL’s Canadian teams, also will handle broadcasts for Anaheim, Carolina, Columbus, Dallas and St. Louis beginning this season.