regional sports networks

Regional sports networks are venturing into launching their first OTT channels to tap into the cord-cutting market. It’s an important move, but one that needs to be followed up with wider streaming distribution agreements to reach as broad an audience as possible.

Local-area Red Sox and Bruins enthusiasts don’t seem at all sold on ditching pay TV for this new $30-a-month OTT service.

The New England Sports Network becomes the first regional sports network in America to go over the top with NESN 360.

DirecTV said it is making programming from the Marquee Sports Network, a joint venture of Sinclair Broadcast Group and the Chicago Cubs, available nationwide, except for live games of the Cubs and the WNBA Chicago Sky. The satellite company already carried the regional sports network in Chicago.

The bargaining standoff between Major League Baseball and its players that led to last week’s cancellation of Opening Day is a particularly bitter pill to swallow for the local and national outlets that bring games to their most ardent fans — networks that already have experienced two seasons of COVID-driven disruptions.

Charter Communications and Sinclair Broadcast Group have agreed to a one-month extension on an expired deal to carry the broadcaster’s regional sports networks and local broadcast channels on Charter’s Spectrum TV system. The extension will keep Sinclair’s 294 broadcast stations in 89 markets — at least those of which that are in the Charter footprint — on the program guides of Charter’s more than 15.8 million remaining pay TV subscribers. More notably, it might — or might not — keep Sinclair’s Bally Sports-branded regional sports networks on Spectrum TV, as well.

Sinclair Broadcast Group said it plans to launch its direct-to-consumer product in the five markets where it has rights to stream baseball teams in the first half of 2022. Sinclair said that following rights renewals with the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League, its Bally Sports regional sports networks have rights to launch DTC products with a total of 33 teams.

Evoca, a multichannel TV service built on NextGen TV broadcast technology, is launching its service, which includes the Altitude Sports regional network, in Denver. For $25 per month plus a receiver — which costs $5 per month to rent or $250 to buy — with no contract and a guaranteed price for two years, new Evoca subscribers will get access to live games from the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche along with Colorado State University and University of Denver games. The service also includes NFL Network, Game Show Network, Curiosity Stream, Bloomberg and other channels along with access to ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates through a provided antenna.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, which on Thursday announced a new streaming rights deal with the National Basketball Association and an agreement with creditors that will pump $600 million into its Diamond Sports unit, says that its direct-to-consumer business should generate as much as $2.87 billion by 2027. Sinclair put its latest projections for its sports business in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sinclair Broadcast Group says it has signed a multi-year renewal of its carriage pact with the National Hockey League. The new agreement includes in-market and direct-to-consumer streaming rights of live games of 12 teams on Bally Sports. The 12 teams are: Anaheim Ducks, Arizona Coyotes, Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets, Dallas Stars, Detroit Red Wings, Florida Panthers, Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota Wild, Nashville Predators, St. Louis Blues and Tampa Bay Lightning.

The local sports saga is playing out in markets across the U.S. as cable and satellite TV companies abandon regional sports networks. Rather than accept large monthly subscription fees, pay TV providers like Comcast, DirecTV and Dish, and digital providers such as YouTube TV and Hulu, are increasingly walking away to keep costs down. They’ve decided the amount they have to pay to keep RSNs in the bundle no longer makes economic sense, given how few people watch them and how much they charge.

Evoca, a live TV service that delivers channels via ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology, says that Sinclair has refused to negotiate on carriage for its Bally Sports regional networks. For about the past year it has been trying to get Bally Sports Arizona so the Phoenix homes that watch over-the-air broadcast TV can watch their local professional sports teams. Bally Sports Arizona carries live games from the Phoenix Suns, the Arizona Mercury, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Arizona Coyotes.

Major League Baseball is in talks to launch a nationwide video-streaming service that would enable fans to watch their teams’ hometown games without a cable-TV subscription. The web-based service — which could address a decades-old annoyance for baseball fans that some have partly blamed for the league’s steadily declining viewership — could launch as early as the 2023 season, a person with direct knowledge of the negotiations said.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred is not a fan of Sinclair Broadcast Group’s $250 million plan to parlay its 19 regional sports networks into a streaming service. For one thing, Manfred doesn’t believe Sinclair has enough digital rights from the 14 MLB clubs it has licensing agreements with to pull off such an enterprise.

MSG Networks announced that it has completed a comprehensive, multi-year renewal of its distribution agreement with Verizon Fios. The new deal ensures Verizon Fios customers will continue to have access to MSG Networks and hundreds of exclusive, live games from the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, Buffalo Sabres and New York Red Bulls as part of their Fios TV packages and through MSG GO, the companies said.

The NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks have a new voice as their play-by-play announcer. Also a new gender. Veteran sportscaster Lisa Byington is the new lead announcer for Bucks television broadcasts on Bally Sports Wisconsin for the 2021-22 season. She replaces longtime announcer Jim Paschke, who is retiring. Former Bucks All-Star forward Marques Johnson will continue as analyst

The former president and general manager of NBC Sports Washington is tapped by Sinclair Broadcast Group to lead its Bally Sports West, Bally Sports SoCal and Bally Sports San Diego regional sports networks.

Although direct-to-consumer offerings are the latest rage, much of Sinclair’s future in the space could be determined by its retrans talks with Dish Network.

The sports channels still lack YouTube TV, Hulu, fuboTV carriage. Dish negotiations are expected in August.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, already the nation’s dominant owner of regional sports networks, has made an offer to acquire NBCUniversal’s seven regional sports networks. If Sinclair succeeds in buying the RSNs, it would add dozens of popular National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball teams to its already vast collection of sports broadcast rights. The deal would also give Sinclair an 8% stake in SportsNet New York, which broadcasts Mets games.

News this past week that Sinclair Broadcast Group and investment banker LionTree are raising $250 million to launch a sports streaming service may not be quite as big a deal as, say, that $43 billion spinoff/merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery. But despite the difference in the number of zeroes involved, a Sinclair streaming service could  dramatically reshape the sports streaming leader board, and not incidentally, what’s left of the cable bundle and broadcast TV, too.

One month after the 2021 Major League Baseball regular season threw out its first pitch, virtual multichannel video programming distributors YouTube TV, Hulu Plus Live TV and Fubo TV are still without Sinclair Broadcast Group’s regional sports networks, now rebranded as Bally Sports Networks. Pricing appears to be the reason for the decision to do without the channels, and apparently there has been little movement on either side regarding negotiations.

The rebranding, which takes effect immediately, encompasses 42 NBC and Telemundo owned stations, seven regional sports networks and multicast networks.

Wells Fargo media analyst Steven Cahall told clients Tuesday that he believes Sinclair Broadcast Group’s regional sports networks could face a “tumultuous” period over the next few months, as uncertainty mounts concerning its upcoming carriage renewal with Dish Network and its ongoing battle with streamers YouTube TV and Hulu Live.

Major League Baseball is considering a rule change that cord cutters can cheer. After years of relying on traditional distribution of local games via cable and satellite (plus, to a limited extent, over-the-top streaming), MLB is now urging its regional sports networks to explore direct-to-customer possibilities for local fans.

Don Roberts, Sinclair Broadcast Group’s VP of sports engineering, is navigating a sports production landscape that has been profoundly changed by the COVID-19 pandemic while trying to make sure that Sinclair’s multi-billion-dollar bet on the former Fox RSNs pays off. He’s managing technical changes from the RSNs’ Bally rebrand and overseeing construction of a new origination facility in Atlanta, while meeting COVID protocols for three concurrent major-league sports for the RSNs and two professional tennis tours for Tennis Channel. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.