Sinclair Broadcast Group is quietly raising money for a new service that would stream games by the St. Louis Cardinals, the Dallas Mavericks and scores of other popular sports teams to fans over the Internet, The NY Post reports.
The publicly traded media company — which owns exclusive rights to broadcast games for dozens of Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association and National Hockey League teams — is working with investment bank LionTree to raise more than $250 million for the venture, according to two sources with knowledge of the plans.
Sinclair has been telling hedge funds and other potential investors that it aims to charge $23 a month to fans who want to stream games in markets where it owns sports broadcasting rights, sources said.
The service, which Sinclair hopes to launch at the start of the baseball season next year, stands to be a game-changer for fans — and a major nuisance for the cable industry.
Sinclair in 2019 paid $9.6 billion for 21 regional sports networks owned by Fox, giving it exclusive rights to dozens of teams, including the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings and Columbus Blue Jackets.
While the NBA offers League Pass for out-of-town fans, there are limited streaming options for hometown fans to watch their local sports teams besides cable. That is because sports teams for decades have sold rights to air their games to broadcasters like Fox and Sinclair, which then charge cable and satellite TV operators to distribute the games to their customers.
Sinclair in 2019 paid a whopping $9.6 billion for 21 regional sports networks owned by Fox, giving it exclusive rights to 14 MLB teams, 16 NBA teams, and 12 NHL teams.
Tensions between cable operators and broadcasters have gotten so heated in recent years that satellite TV operator Dish in July 2019 stopped paying for rights to Sinclair’s games altogether — correctly betting that its customers wouldn’t drop their Dish subscriptions any faster than before.
Sinclair also owns 20 percent of YES network, which airs Yankees and Brooklyn Nets games. It’s unclear if Sinclair’s streaming service would include YES as it’s controlled by the Yankees.
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