SBJ Media: Inside the Sinclair-Dish Network deal

Sinclair and Dish Network have ended negotiations around the Bally Sports RSNs, meaning that the satellite distributor is unlikely to carry the local sports channels for at least the next several years, if ever, according to several sources. Dish TV will carry Sinclair’s 144 local broadcast stations and Tennis Channel, but it did not come to an agreement for the company’s local sports channels.

Word is that Sinclair execs became worried that Dish Network had no intention of ever signing an RSN deal and was stringing along the negotiations. The idea is that Sinclair would lose a lot of negotiating leverage on its local stations once the highly rated NFL season ends.

Sinclair and Dish already had reached a deal on the local stations when the talks over the RSNs got serious. Rather than hammering out deal terms, Dish execs would make certain requests that Sinclair viewed as a time-delaying tactic. Dish pushed for and secured four or five negotiating extensions after its deal originally ended two months ago, and Sinclair did not want to have any more delays with its local station business.

Sinclair opted to end the negotiations and move forward. The move caught many sports media execs by surprise, as they expected Sinclair to pull its stations as a way to force Dish to cut an RSN deal. In the end, Sinclair opted not to put its local station deal in peril by trying to convince Dish to return its RSNs to its systems.

Dish Network is in more than 8 million homes. The failure to work out an RSN deal with Dish could wind up hitting teams’ revenue as their rights deals expire.

The bond market reacted with fury to the fact that Sinclair was unable to reach an RSN deal with Dish Network, with Diamond Sports Group’s bonds among the day’s “biggest high-yield decliners,” according to Bloomberg.

The problem: The financial markets expected an RSN deal with Dish Network. And not only that. Without Dish, the markets believe Diamond Sports will need cash sooner than expected, which brings the possibility of bankruptcy in play.

Adding to the financial markets’ pessimism is the fact that Sinclair has a similar negotiation with Charter next year. There’s a sense that if Sinclair can’t pull off an RSN deal with Dish, how will it be able to convince Charter to keep the RSNs?

My opinion is that the pessimism over the Charter deal is misguided. It’s always been a mistake to view any Charlie Ergen deal as a bellwether for the business. Dish had leverage in these talks that Charter won’t have, as it already had dropped the RSNs in July 2019. It’s possible that Charter will drop the RSNs, too. But it’s still way too early to make that prediction with any clarity.

A huge majority of NFL teams -- 21 of 32 -- have posted ratings gains in their home markets this season. Here are three stats that stood out to me:

• The two biggest markets are posting ratings gains. While on-field play has been poor in the nation’s top market, fans still are sticking with the Jets (+5%) and Giants (-1%). The story is even better out West, where Chargers' ratings in L.A. are up 24% and the Rams are up 11%.

• Bears games in Chicago have posted the league’s second-sharpest decline, with a drop of 13%. But there is room for optimism. The Bears will pull a huge number on Thanksgiving and excitement over rookie QB Justin Fields should help the team close that gap.

• Seven teams posted their biggest local TV rating on Sunday in Week 10 -- the Colts, Chiefs, Raiders, Packers, Vikings, Eagles and Steelers.

Disney and Univision posted their highest MLS regular-season TV viewership numbers since 2015, when the current deal started, reports SBJ’s Austin Karp & Mark J. Burns. MLS games on ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 are up 12% from 2019, averaging 276,000 viewers for 31 matches. Spanish-language games on Univision/UniMas posted a 18% increase over 2019, averaging 284,000 viewers.

ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 had not only the best audience under the current rights deal, but the best for Disney networks since 2012 (311,000 viewers). Disney networks were up 18% from 2020, when the league had the MLS is Back Tournament and a smattering of regular-season matches. MLS games on Fox and FS1 are down 7% from 2019, when the league benefitted from using FIFA Women’s World Cup games as a lead-in. This season, games averaged 210,000 viewers on Fox/FS1.

“We’ve worked with those partners since the end of last year to make sure that we had a smart and strategic schedule,” said MLS Senior VP/Media Seth Bacon. “We really focused on the beginning of the year to make sure we came out with big audiences, big network, big games. … We wanted that first three, four months to be as loud as we possibly could.”

Bacon also cited 48% increase in social-media engagement across all of the league’s platforms from 2020 to 2021, including 150% on TikTok specifically. “We have gotten so good at making sure that we know how to point people to where our content is,” Bacon said. “We can reach them in multiple ways because we've got such a young fan base, such a digitally-native fanbase, and we can push them to games on any network, games on any platform and deliver results.”

MLS is in the process of negotiating its next media-rights deals, with content including local games, an out-of-market package, national games, international rights and sports betting data rights. The Leagues Cup with Liga MX, set to start in 2023, also could be in the mix. ESPN, Fox Sports and Univision right now pay a combined $90 million on average over the course of the current eight-year deals, which run through 2022.

• The Beijing Winter Olympics will get a nice late-night ratings bump with the coveted post-Super Bowl slot on NBC in February (coverage likely coming on between 10:00-11:00pm ET). SBJ's Austin Karp notes the record for a post-Super Bowl show is 52.9 million for an episode of "Friends" after Super Bowl XXX in 1996. Last season, "The Equalizer" after Super Bowl LIII averaged 20.4 million. Looking back at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, the top audience for any window was 28.3 million for the Opening Ceremony. 

• The Mountain West Conference has a tie-in to the Arizona Bowl, but the image of the game’s new title sponsor and streamer, Barstool Sports, could be an issue for some programs. “We’ve definitely had some staff people that have voiced their very strong opinion that they do not in any way, shape or form appreciate what Barstool is,” San Diego State AD John David Wicker told the Union-Tribune. “The way they talk about women and things like that. I would definitely have to agree with a lot of their sentiments.”

• Since joining CAA earlier this year, sports broadcasting agent Kevin Belbey has signed multiple clients, including play-by-play announcer Noah Eagle former soccer player Freddie Adu, notes my colleague Liz Mullen. Belbey, previously with The Montag Group, has also signed MLB Network studio host and play-by-play announcer Stephen Nelson, ESPN studio host and reporter Christine Williamson and CBS Sports soccer reporter Jenny Chiu.

• Lena Waithe and her Hillman Grad Productions banner are "developing a scripted adaptation" of the documentary "Hoop Dreams" for Warner Bros., notes The Hollywood Reporter. Waithe’s take, "which is in development and does not yet have a network attached, is described as a coming of age drama following two Black teens in 1990s Chicago." Aaron Rahsaan Thomas, who counts "Friday Night Lights" and the "30 for 30" film "Trojan War" among his credits, will "pen the script and exec produce."

• Tonight's "ManningCast" guests for the ESPN2 broadcast of Rams-49ers are Al Michaels, Phil Mickelson, Draymond Green and Philip Rivers.

• It was a Shulman family affair for the call of the Drexel-Syracuse men’s hoops game yesterday. Dan Shulman called the game on ESPN2, while down on press row, his son Ben, a current Syracuse student, called the game for WAER Sports radio.