Just before we turned off our heads for a long-awaited normal 4th of July the New York Post reported that Sinclair, the broadcasting superpower is looking to bid on NBC’s regional sports networks. This would be a very logical move for Sinclair because if the early stories about the possible look and cost of their straight-to-consumer property was meant to be a trial balloon, it was laughed out of the court of public opinion.
Bally Needs To Be National
Bally sports as it exists is too regional. That’s where the purchase of other RSNs can come into play. Because the more RSN’s one has, the larger the reach it will have, and most importantly the more opportunity the owner will have to build an actual national network around it. With national reach comes national advertising and money to make bids for major sports coverage. Whether it be for the sake of a streaming service or even a traditional cable channel, shopping a specific channel to a specific market means there is a big chance that you could lose a few major markets in a bad negotiation. RSN’s are losing steam as cable providers drop customers. And the providers are not jumping at the chance to overpay for content that is not drawing new customers. But as a national sports network competing with ESPN and Fox Sports it may have a chance at relevance. Sure for viewers in this or that market, you will see the home team but after the game, you can see the big sports wrap up. Wake up Saturday for the big College Football pregame show etc. With some work it could finagle a national contract. The whole move would seem counterintuitive, but the writing on the wall already says that it’s expected approach is dead in the water.
In the end, I still think it will all end up being called Amazon Prime Sports or Hulu Sports. Because Sinclair may be jumping into waters it is not prepared to deal with for the long haul. Amazon has been slowly building its sports content and will be an NFL destination for the foreseeable future. It’s got money to burn on long-term projects and 147 million Prime subscribers to market to. If it were to throw in RSN’s it may push Prime to Netflix-like numbers. Remember, for Amazon its not about TV, it’s about what do people buy while they are watching. So between ads sold to regional advertisers, it could just push things that it wants to sell on its website. Or it could use interactive apps like Alexa to cash in on impulse buys. Did that commercial remind you that you need dishwashing detergent, order it by asking for it.
But that is another conversation. The headline for the moment is the Sinclair bid for NBC’s RSNs. Our bet is that this is a very important move for the company whether it says so publically or not. And if it does not work out, you may see something akin to the out of nowhere spin-off of AT&Ts TV properties and Warner Media assets in a release saying the company wanted to retarget its core broadcast business.
