Charter and Sinclair have reportedly reached a one-month extension on negotiations for a new carriage deal.
According to Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand, the companies’ current agreement—which covers the Bally Sports regional networks along with Sinclair’s local broadcast channels—was due to expire at midnight on February 28. As Ourand points out, Charter could be a make-or-break deal for Sinclair’s live sports empire.
“It’s not an overstatement to say that the future of the Bally Sports RSNs depend on Charter agreeing to carry them on their Spectrum TV systems,” he wrote.
Bally Sports RSNs have faced a lot of uncertainty since Sinclair bought the channels for $9.6 billion in 2019. The channels were dropped from both YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV and last year, when Sinclair and Dish Network finally reached a new carriage agreement, the deal left out Bally Sports.
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Sinclair and Bally Sports are also facing the prospect of a delayed start to the professional baseball season as contract negotiations continue between MLB and MLBPA.
Nevertheless, Sinclair is moving ahead with plans to launch a direct-to-consumer streaming service that will offer access to live games. The company has already renewed digital streaming rights deal with the NBA and NHL along with a handful of MLB teams including the Kansas City Royals, Milwaukee Brewers, Miami Marlins and Detroit Tigers.
During Sinclair’s earnings call last week, CEO Chris Ripley said he expects the app will “soft launch” in the first half of 2022. This week, Sinclair subsidiary Diamond Sports announced $1 billion in incremental financing to help move forward with the Bally Sports DTC launch.
Sinclair has yet to announce a launch date or pricing for its upcoming streaming service but Sports Business Journal previously reported it will likely cost more than $20 per month and will limit live game availability to local markets.
In a regulatory filing last summer, Sinclair predicted its streaming service could eventually attract approximately 4.4 million subscribers and generate around $2 billion in annual revenue. The company projected about 1.7 million subscribers to the service would be from the cord-cutter/cord-never category and another approximately 1.4 million would be non-RSN subscribers from its distributor partners. About 1.3 million subscribers would come from current subscribers to its Bally Sports networks.