While Major League Baseball has restricted regional sports networks from acquiring multiscreen rights when they carve out broadcast deals with individual teams, the practice has been encouraged by the National Basketball Association.
And as several deep-in-the-weeds reports from Multichannel News showcase, RSNs around the country are beginning to promote and exploit the TV Everywhere rights acquired as part of their expensive NBA deals.
After testing the various technological components last season, all 17 Fox Sports Net RSNs are streaming pre-game, in-game and post-game NBA coverage.
So far, Fox has signed deals to offer NBA multiscreen rights with Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR), Cox, Cablevision (NYSE: CVC), AT&T (NYSE: T) and Suddenlink, among others. The conglomerate has yet to forge agreements with Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA), DirecTV (NASDAQ: DTV), Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ).
Six Comcast SportsNet RSNs, meanwhile, have also quietly begun offering TVE capabilities to operators. Time Warner Cable has offered multiscreen access to Lakers games on Southern California's SportsNet since last season, while MSG will begin offering Knicks game streams in December.
For more:
- read this Multichannel News story
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