Evoca, a live TV service that delivers channels via ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology, is claiming that Sinclair has refused to negotiate on carriage for its Bally Sports regional networks.
Evoca, which offers more than 60 channels through a current $9.50 per month for life promotion, launched in Phoenix on October 1. For about the past year it has been trying to get Bally Sports Arizona so the Phoenix homes that watch over-the-air broadcast TV can watch their local professional sports teams. Bally Sports Arizona carries live games from the Phoenix Suns, the Arizona Mercury, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Arizona Coyotes.
But an Evoca spokesperson said Sinclair “will not play ball.”
The service has been able to reach deals with RSNs in other markets it serves. Evoca has Altitude Sports in Colorado Springs along with Root Sports and AT&T SportsNet in Boise.
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Evoca CEO Todd Achilles said his company has been up front in its offers and that it’s happy to pay the standard rate for distributing Bally Sports Arizona. But he said Sinclair’s response so far has been either they’re not interested or they’re looking to include retransmission compensation as part of the deal. Achilles said the only market where Evoca overlaps with Sinclair’s broadcast footprint is in Idaho so asking for retrans rates there when the deal is for an RSN in Arizona “seems like abuse of the retrans rules.”
Fierce Video reached out to Sinclair for comment but the company has yet to respond.
Mostly, Achilles said Sinclair’s apparent refusal to negotiate hurts fans. He said 33% of homes in Phoenix watch TV through an OTA antenna, up 3% year over year according to SNL Kagan, and that Evoca could provide those fans with a chance to watch Phoenix Suns games while expanding the audience for Bally Sports Arizona.
Achilles said ATSC 3.0 NEXTGEN TV can give teams and rights holders the ability to either stream or broadcast free and paywalled content.
“You open up a bunch of new opportunities to meet the fans where they are,” he said.
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Sinclair’s Bally Sports RSNs have been dropped from services including Dish TV, YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV. The scarcity of the channels on virtual MVPDs led Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to recently subsidize DirecTV Stream subscriptions for fans of his team.
With so many cracks visible in the current RSN distribution model, Sinclair is pushing forward with a plan to offer its live sports rights through a direct-to-consumer app that it’s working on launching next year. The company has received pushback from leagues—MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred last month claimed that Sinclair doesn’t have the rights for such a streaming product. But Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley has remained adamant about his company’s streaming plans, saying last week that Sinclair has “critical mass in terms of rights to launch a product and that’s what we intend to do.”