Charter Communications has confirmed that its exclusive regional sports network home for the Los Angeles Dodgers will likely remain blacked out for most of the Southern California region for a fifth consecutive Major League Baseball season.
"Other distributors are not expected to carry SportsNet LA this season," Charter said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times.
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Time Warner Cable launched SportsNet LA back in 2014 on the back of an $8.35 billion, 25-year exclusive local TV deal with the Dodgers. TWC wasn’t able to gain carriage for the RSN with DirecTV or any other local pay TV operator. (DirecTV was later accused by the FCC of improperly colluding with rival pay TV companies to shun SportsNet.)
For its part, Charter inherited the carriage issue in 2016, when it closed on its purchase of TWC.
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Charter and the Dodgers announced that they will once again simulcast a limited number of games on broadcast channel KTLA-TV—five games will be on the channel in March and April.
TWC launched SportsNet LA soon after strong-arming DirecTV and other operators to carry a channel built around the Los Angeles Lakers.