Stadium-Chicago Sports Plan Shows New, Old Approach To RSNs
This week’s news that three Chicago sports teams — the Blackhawks, Bulls and White Sox — will leave the NBC Sports Chicago regional sports network to turn Stadium into their new local network could be a big deal for the future of RSNs.
As the RSN model has eroded along with the traditional cable bundle these past few years, we’ve seen various liferafts emerge.
For the ACC, the league simply parked its former RSN games on the CW. Teams like the NBA’s Utah Jazz and Phoenix Suns simply left RSNs entirely, in favor of a return to local broadcast. Some teams, like the Los Angeles Clippers, launched new standalone streaming services. New York RSNs (not affiliated with Diamond Sports) unveiled direct-to-consumer streaming options. Several MLB teams saw games revert to league-operated streaming after Diamond failed to make payments.
Despite all of those paths we’ve already seen, the Stadium RSN for those Chicago sports teams seems to be yet another slightly unique solution, though it’s really just a take on an existing idea.
Along with what’s assumed to be a reconstituted Stadium streamer as a three-team direct-to-consumer app, the teams would also pursue broadcast TV options as well, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
So in some ways, this is similar to what we’ve seen from teams like the Jazz and Clippers, but doing so here with a three-team bundle that appears to acknowledge that forcing fans to subscribe to multiple services to watch the teams in one market has become a ludicrous idea that’s getting pushback from consumers.
Last year, we talked about how sports rights are cutting TV to pieces, and it’s even more true today than it was then. Recent LG Ad Solutions research shows 38% of those surveyed used three or more streaming services to watch live sports. Packaging multiple teams together on one local streaming option — or just leaving them on broadcast — at least creates simpler decision-making… unless the Chicago sports fan in question here roots for the Cubs instead (in that case, enjoy your seperate $20 per month DTC streaming app from Marquee Sports on top of this, plus other subs you may have to watch nationally-televised Cubs games).
Most of all, this bundled approach to RSNs is just coming 15-20 years too late.
When RSNs first emerged, many were cash cows for individual teams looking to capitalize on premium local cable inclusion. The separate launches of networks specifically for the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Dodgers is potentially the biggest example there. While the Lakers are on Spectrum SportsNet, the Dodgers have their own network, Spectrum SportsNet LA. Other L.A. teams have their rights parked on Diamond Sports RSNs, or ClipperVision. If you want all of the teams across Los Angeles and Anaheim, you’re paying for separate networks/services for the Clippers, Angels/Ducks, Dodgers, Lakers and Kings.
Hindsight is 20/20, sure. But by the time the Dodgers’ network was rolling out, questions were already coming around why consumers were paying for two separate channels for the Lakers and Dodgers. In an ideal world, these local teams are just bundled from the start, and maybe the backlash on RSNs gets a little less pronounced — as is the case for entities like NESN (Red Sox/Celtics/Bruins), YES (Yankees/Nets) and MSG (Rangers/Knicks), among others.
So the roadmap’s already there for how bundling teams together on RSNs/streaming can work. And perhaps success for the Chicago venture (admittedly facilitated by Stadium sharing partial ownership with the Bulls and White Sox) means other teams juggling RSN issues can find a similar path forward. But it feels like TV is reaching a breaking point with how spread out sports is getting. Consolidation, and the involvement of local broadcast, could be the play that cures a lot of ills, for the teams, networks and consumers.
