The Texas Rangers’ home opener is here. But chances are, you won’t see it on your TV.
There will be many reasons to be angry at the Texas Rangers this season, but the inability to watch their games on your TV is not one of them.
The Rangers’ 2021 season is underway, and there’s a great chance you won’t able to see Monday’s home opener at Globe Life Field, an afternoon that is expected to produce the first stadium full of fans since before the start of the pandemic more than a year ago.
The Rangers now officially join the misery currently “enjoyed” by the Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Stars, the other two primary tenants of Bally Sports Southwest, formerly known as Fox Sports Southwest.
This is just another battle in the endless fight between broadcast companies and the cord-cutting trend.
If you are not a subscriber to AT&T/DirecTV, chances are you will not be able to watch the Rangers when their games are carried by Bally Sports Southwest.
Following the bouncing ball: Sinclair Broadcast Group owns the Fox Sports regional networks. On Wednesday, the Fox Sports regional networks re-branded to Bally, named after the casino.
Some fans hoped that this move signaled that Sinclair would come to an agreement with all of the other distributors such as Hulu, YouTubeTV and the rest, to show Mavs, Rangers and Stars games.
Isn’t happening.
The “cord-cutters” who want to watch the Rangers games will have to do without, or most likely sign up with AT&T.
“Unfortunately this is not just a Sinclair issue. At the start of this season Hulu and YouTube don’t carry 25 of the 30 MLB teams on local channels,” Texas Rangers spokesman John Blake said on March 31. “Sling is also dropping all of the NBC [regional sports networks] on April 1.
“So it’s an Issue between streaming channels and RSNs across the board. We can’t put this all on Sinclair. We are certainly aware this is a distribution issue for a lot of fans. I wish there was a better solution than just switching to another carrier that has Bally Sports Southwest. But it seems to be an industry-wide problem.”
Like the Mavericks and Stars, the Rangers signed their local broadcasting rights with Fox Sports Southwest, and have no role in the negotiations between Dish, YouTube, or any service carrier.
The agreement between Fox Sports Southwest and most of its distributors expired last year. Most people didn’t notice because the games were canceled.
Sinclair wants to charge a higher fee than the distributors want to pay, so here we are.
Bally Sports currently directs interested consumers to www.getmyhometeams.com for the best current way to watch the Mavericks, Rangers, Stars and Dallas Wings.
Spectrum and TVMax also carry Bally Sports Southwest.
The Texas Rangers were desperate to avoid having to field phone calls, like the Mavs and Stars routinely do, but they are powerless here.
There is literally nothing the Rangers can do other than hope Sinclair and its distributors come to an agreement.
Until they do, you will either learn to live without the Rangers on your television, or switch your TV package.
This story was originally published April 1, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
