Regional Sports Networks Going Bankrupt

At least half the time, the teams are paying for the production costs themselves (and it shows). There's no way they're making it back via added advertising (the ads are probably make goods for in-stadium sponsors). All the RSNs have to do is clear it.

 

Can you imagine the Angels trying to lure a new broadcast outlet, while they have to admit they just finished the worst season in franchise history.

 

What about the White Sox?

 

I wonder what their TV audience is considering that attendance was only down about 60,000 from the previous year. They drew an announced 2,577,597 fans, an average of 31,822 per game, 13th in the MLB.

 

Reinsdorf (Sox, Bulls) just launched a network with the Wirtzes (Blackhawks) to replace the old NBC Sports Chicago.

 

I was at the Ducks game last night when they made an announcement hyping their new Victory-plus streaming system. I had downloaded that into my phone a couple of days ago. Last night, I opened it to compare it to what was happening on the ice. The stream was 30 seconds behind. I probably won't be doing that.
The Ducks now have an agreement with KCOP/13 (the worst independent in L.A.) to show their games. On the way home, I wondered if the games will be allowed on ESPN+ or be blacked out locally.

 

At least the first month or so of games will be on ESPN+, but I don't know if there will be local blackouts.

 

I was watching the game on KCOP the other night vs the Kings and the app was only about 5 seconds behind the broadcast, which is obviously behind the live action.

A problem with the delays is I will often get notifications of a goal on my phone before I see it being scored. Which is like once per game for the Ducks (sorry, Chris).

 

NBC Sports failed in Chicago? NBC went all in in Boston. Created a new station and combined it with the local Telemundo and NBC Sports, plus a local cable news station.

 

Their last day was last week. Once the Sox were done, they were out of content.

 

Comcast/NBC wanted to continue in Chicago but Reinsdorf wanted to do his own network (he also owns Stadium, a national service), and the Blackhawks joined in, much as they did with his SportsVision outlet in 1982. That lost millions and became SportsChannel under the Cablevision group owned by the Dolans. Then Comcast / NBC came along. Now the Bulls, Hawks and Sox are going it alone again. They've made deals with DirecTV and what was RCN cable, but not Comcast, the largest operator here. So they're also on a couple of subchannels (62.2 and 62.3) for free.

 

You don't need to apologize when you're right.