The Tennis Channel is lining up to play on multiple distribution courts in 2024 as it looks to serve its hard-core viewers wherever and whenever they want to see live tennis and Pickleball action, according to Tennis Channel president Ken Solomon. The Sinclair Broadcast Group-owned service is planning to launch a direct-to-consumer offering in 2024 to complement its lineup of the Tennis Channel linear service, its Pickleballtv and T2 FAST Channels and its Tennis Channel Plus SVOD service.
Tennis Channel’s Petko Unfiltered will be translated into Spanish using AI tech. Sinclair commits to responsible and transparent AI practices, joins authenticity and provenance organizations CAI and C2PA.
Sinclair Inc. is exploring bringing in an equity partner for the Tennis Channel as well as other strategic alternatives for the network, industry sources confirmed to Front Office Sports, marking a major potential move for one of the most unique success stories in sports media.
Tennis Channel will have exclusive, live coverage of the second annual United Cup competition Dec. 28-Jan. 7, the first event of the 2024 tennis season. Held in the Australian cities of […]
He will oversee the company’s strategy to make Tennis Channel’s television network available directly to customers via a new streaming platform, planned for 2024.
Tennis Channel and the Carvana Professional Pickleball Association (PPA Tour) have launched Pickleballtv (PBTV), a television network completely devoted to America’s fastest-growing sport. Available now on Amazon Freevee and Fubo, the new, […]
Exclusives
Tennis Channel’s free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel T2 is now available to Amazon Freevee viewers, and on sports-first live TV streaming platform Fubo in its base Pro channel plan, […]
Tennis Channel and the Carvana Professional Pickleball Association (PPA Tour) have formed a commercial joint venture to further build pickleball – America’s fastest growing sport – in this country and […]
Sinclair today announced a distribution agreement with Hulu to add carriage of Tennis Channel, T2, Comet and Charge! to Hulu + Live TV, beginning January 2024. Tennis Channel, the only television-based multiplatform destination dedicated to […]
Tennis Channel’s two-week coverage of Wimbledon, the sport’s oldest major tournament, will begin Monday, July 3, at 5 p.m. ET, according to a Sinclair press release. “In its 15th year […]
Tennis Channel will show the NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Tennis Championships May 19-20, live from the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Fla. Exclusive coverage begins with the women’s team […]
Sinclair Broadcast Group has set a distribution agreement with YouTube TV to add carriage of Tennis Channel, T2, Charge! and TBD to YouTube TV’s service offerings. The agreement also extends […]
Technology executives from Sinclair, Gray, WLS Chicago and Dalet shared some of the more enduring remote workflows holding over from the pandemic in a TVNewsCheck webinar last week, noting that improvements in IP connectivity and public cloud technology are pushing innovation even further.
Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Tennis Channel is now available to British tennis fans thanks to the Aug. 19 U.K. launch of the Tennis Channel International streaming service. The debut follows launches […]
The Switch, a provider of production services and global delivery of live video, deployed groundbreaking connectivity to support live coverage of this year’s French Open. The state-of-the-art deployment in Paris’s Stade Roland […]
New remote production techniques, distributed workflows and onsite safety protocols have dramatically reshaped sports production. As COVID-19 continues to be a threat, sports producers can expect less travel, trucks staying in place and a slowdown of UHD production until the crisis abates.
Tennis Channel will introduce a daily, three-hour edition of Tennis Channel Live while the professional tennis tours are on hiatus due to the worldwide coronavirus containment effort. Beginning, Monday, March 23, at […]
The multi-year agreement also provides for carriage of Sinclair-owned Tennis Channel.
Under a comprehensive contract, the streaming service will carry Sinclair’s ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox affiliates within their markets. The deal also includes carriage of the Tennis Channel and possibly later CW and MNT affiliates and the Comet TV diginet. Terms were not disclosed.
Tennis Channel has appointed longtime sports and entertainment marketing executive Steve Disson to the newly created position of head of new business development, sponsorships. He will be based in Washington, […]
The ratings service says that under a new deal it will now be providing national as well as local ratings to the Sinclair-owned cable network. “By expanding our relationship with Nielsen…we’ll now have a complete view of our audience,” said Tennis Channel researcher Steve Badeau.
The programming service devoted to tennis and similar pastimes using a racquet was available to 37 million subscribers when Sinclair Broadcast Group assumed ownership on March 1. As the rare network devoted to one sport or group of sports managed by a top owner of TV stations — Sinclair being the biggest station owner nationwide — Tennis Channel will end 2016 with around 50 million subscribers and expects to reach 60 million or more next summer, on or near par with the rest of its single-sport rivals.
Sinclair Broadcast Group said today that it closed on its previously announced acquisition of the stock of Tennis Channel for $350 million. The acquisition was funded through cash on hand and a draw on the company’s revolving line of credit.
Sinclair Buying Tennis Channel For $350M
The purchase price is partially offset by the network’s $200 million in net operating losses, which Sinclair will be able to carry forward to its taxes and save it around $65 million. Sinclair has lined up deals with MVPDs to increase the channel’s coverage from 30 million to 50 million homes. The channel’s CEO, Ken Solomon, is staying on.
The station group has had talks with the private equity groups that control the cable network with a 35-million home reach, according to the financial paper. Sources peg the price at more than $500 million.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in DC just shot down the FCC’s ruling last year that would have required Comcast to take Tennis Channel off of an extra-fee sports tier so it could compete more equally with the cable giant’s Golf Channel and NBC Sports Network.
The FCC upheld a judge’s ruling against Comcast, saying the cable giant discriminated against the Tennis Channel by putting it in a less-advantageous tier of service compared to Comcast’s own sports channels.
The niche cable network could be on the block by the end of the year if regulators agree to hand it another 20 million households, sources close to the matter say. A positive decision in the matter, pending before the FCC, would lift the Tennis Channel’s distribution from 34 million homes to more than 50 million — boosting its value and tilting its owners’ minds toward a sale, these sources say.
The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau is recommending that cable giant Comcast Corp. be sanctioned for unfairly using its market muscle to squeeze the small independent Tennis Channel.
