Sinclair to buy Fox Regional Sports
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They called it Diamond as it's going to cost them a boatload of diamonds to buy them.
Will be interesting to see if Sinclair sticks with the existing business model, which is to distribute RSNs exclusively as parts of cable channel bundles, or if they branch out and begin selling these networks as standalone streaming services too to reach cord-cutters and cord-nevers who do not subscribe to cable bundles but might pay $8 or so per month to watch their local team's games.
I'm not sure the baseball contracts with the RSN's are structured such that they would be allowed to stream them, even if they wanted to.
MLB is thinking about giving teams streaming rights next year.
Here's a quote from a story about the acquisition at The Washington Post:
By acquiring the 21 RSNs, Sinclair will own the linear TV and streaming rights to the games of 42 pro teams: 14 Major League Baseball teams, 16 NBA teams and 12 NHL teams.
If that statement is true, it would appear that Sinclair will be able to stream all those games over the internet as they see fit.
The MLB has out-of-market streaming rights for all teams -- you can subscribe to those games through their MLB.TV service. But aren't the in-market streaming rights (along with the in-market traditional TV rights) held by the RSNs?
Fox Sports signed a deal with MLB to stream locally. Those deals end this year. Out of market will still be blacked out unless the league agrees to change that. MLB is thinking about giving each team the rights to stream their own broadcasts.
It would seem that standalone streaming of in-market MLB games is going to happen next year one way or another. If those rights go to individual teams, rather than the overall league, then teams will each strike their own deals for standalone streaming access. That could happen a number of different ways: partner up with Amazon, Hulu, YouTube or another digital outlet for distribution; allow the RSN that holds their broadcast TV rights to also sell in-market streaming subscriptions; or simply use the existing MLB.TV service to handle in-market streaming subscriptions for their games.
If, on the other hand, in-market streaming rights stay with the league rather than go to the individual teams, I would expect the league to either renew their streaming deal with the Fox (now Diamond) RSNs or bring the whole thing in-house and sell both out-of-market and in-market streaming subscriptions through MLB.TV.
More than likely Amazon will handle streaming for the Yankees. I can see Amazon pairing up with Sinclair to provide streaming for the other RSN's as well.
That seems extremely likely. Hard to imagine that Amazon would even have been a party to the YES acquisition unless they were also getting streaming rights.
Yeah, maybe. Although Sinclair already has their feet wet in the streaming game with their STIRR app. It's new and not very popular but it does offer both on-demand and live linear channel streams. So I'm not sure that Sinclair would see the need to partner up with Amazon (and give them a cut) to distribute any new streaming services tied to their RSNs. (And even if they don't keep streaming rights for the 14 MLB teams tied to their RSNs, I assume they'll still have streaming rights for some or all of the 16 NBA teams and 12 NHL teams.)
I wonder how scalable that app is. Don't forget 21 RSN's all streaming at once will take up more resources.
If Sinclair goes to market with a live streaming RSN app, they'll no doubt need some help from other companies to run the nuts and bolts of the service -- maybe a cloud service provider (e.g. Amazon), various CDNs (e.g. Akamai), etc. But paying third parties such as those to help deliver the service is different than, say, partnering up with Amazon to offer the streaming RSN subscription as an add-on to Prime Video that is accessed exclusively inside Amazon's own app. It's the difference between operational partners and marketing/distribution partners.
I'd bet they continue to use BAMTech for streaming. That is the infrastructure Fox Sports Go is running off of.
Incessantly? Really?
I think you missed the point. The point is - why does someone in eastern PA receive a Rocky Mountain Regional Sports channel in the first place? Look at a map, PA is not regional to Colorado. Why in the world would I want to "activate" it? The Rockies, CS Buffalos, and Nuggets mean nothing to me.
Everyone is getting that channel, not just eastern PA. Likely a mixup, but the real question is, are you getting your own RSN? I'm getting both, and most of us that have a package with their local RSN are getting both too.Incessantly? Really?
Streaming right in market theoretically belong to the teams, but I'm certain Fox, and now Sinclair, have good lawyers and thought of this, and included this in their contracts with the teams, and Sinclair will have an app similar to Fox Sports Go up and running as soon as the government approvals are obtained for the purchase. Streaming, and linear, rights out of market have always belonged to the leagues.
Isn't FOX keeping FS1 and FS2? Are they also keeping FOX Soccer Plus? If so, I see FOX Sports Go being used for broadcasts on those channels and live games on the FOX network. I assume that Sinclair will have to eventually start with a new app.
Fox has two streaming apps now, The Fox Sports app and Fox Sports Go. I assume Fox Sports Go disappears.
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