Fans are numb to not being able to watch Texas Rangers games on TV, which is a crisis
READ MORE
Baseball is back!
The Texas Rangers’ 50th Anniversary celebration starts with Monday’s home opener. Here’s everything you need to know before the first pitch.
Expand All
You are probably one of a few million fans who can’t watch the Texas Rangers’ games on your TV, and while at first it was a source of anger and irritation, now you just accept it.
You’d prefer it if Texas Rangers’ games were on your TV, but you have learned to live without them.
That you have accepted it has become a major problem for all of Major League Baseball, most of the NHL and the NBA, too.
The Texas Rangers’ 50th anniversary season begins on Friday in Toronto, and zero has changed with the club’s television package for fans.
No team needs a resolution to the Great Cord Cutting Calamity more than the Rangers, a team that desperately needs to re-engage with a fan base that has justifiably checked out over these last five seasons of some of the most horrific baseball ever played in Arlington.
The Rangers committed to spending more than $500 million on top free agents this offseason, and should be an interesting team to watch.
But, unless you have paid for the right TV package, which around here is DirecTV, DirecTV Stream, TV Max or Spectrum, you still don’t have access to Rangers games. Or Dallas Mavericks games. Or Dallas Stars games.
Sinclair has been rumored to launch its own streaming platform for more than a year, but we are at Opening Day 2022 and nothing has materialized.
Will this problem have a solution this year?
“My guess is, no,” Dallas Stars president Brad Alberts said via text.
“I think they will,” Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said via email.
Take your pick.
For more than six months it has been reported that Sinclair will launch a Bally Sports streaming app for the regional network of your choice.
It would operate and function like a Paramount+ or a Disney+ or any of those similar platforms.
Various media outlets reported that the price for a Bally Sports regional app would be as high as $23 per month. That would be the most expensive streaming platform on the market; a plan on Netflix is up to more than $15 a month, the highest in the field.
In a recent online event hosted by Digital Entertainment Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group COO Rob Weisbord did not specify how much the app will cost per month.
Weisbord said, however, a “soft launch” of this app will occur in the second quarter of 2022.
Sinclair is banking that consumers will buy this app despite the price because it has contracts to carry 42 teams across MLB, the NHL and NBA.
It’s also banking that people will buy it, and won’t “churn,” the term for people who cancel subscriptions monthly, and re-up later, to reduce the overall per-year cost.
According to a report in Deadline, the Bally Sports “soft launch” would include the regional networks carrying games for the Detroit Tigers, Miami Marlins, Milwaukee Brewers, Tampa Bay Rays and Kansas City Royals.
So far, all of this remains talk.
Since the summer of 2019, Sinclair has taken a beating financially, which could explain why all of this continues to linger; in May of 2019, a Sinclair stock was trading for $61.81. Today, the Sinclair stock is $26.40.
The respective commissioners for the NBA, MLB and NHL have individually addressed this issue, while acknowledging there isn’t that much they can do about it.
What they aren’t going to do is provide any sort of financial aid to Sinclair.
Cuban tried to create a solution by offering to personally cover some of the cost for fans who signed up to subscribe to DirecTV Stream Service to watch Mavs games.
The price of a streaming subscription is $85 a month, and he promised to deliver a $50 check each month to fans who signed up for the promotion. It came with the stipulation that you actually watch the Mavs games.
Cuban’s grand, decent, gesture was not the norm.
All three of the local teams have fielded phone calls from angry fans asking why they can’t get the games on their TV.
Local team representatives tell the consumers about their options, which means spending more on an already bloated monthly TV bill.
When Sinclair Broadcast Group bought the Fox Sports regional networks in August of 2019, industry analysts predicted a change would occur for consumers. No one saw this coming.
(The naming rights of the regional networks has since changed from Fox Sports to Bally Sports.)
The following year, the majority of the contracts between those regional networks and the increasingly popular streaming platforms such as Hulu and YouTube TV all expired; the ensuing disagreement over the price led to the “blackout” of games on local networks all over the country.
The hope was that this would all find some type of solution at some point in 2021, but here we are in 2022. And now Opening Day is upon us, and nothing has changed.
The only dramatic difference now is that most people have learned to live without these games on their TVs, and that is a major problem for NBA, NHL, MLB and specifically a Texas Rangers team that looks like it will be an interesting one to watch.
This story was originally published April 8, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
