Viewership and advertising revenue on RSNs are highest during live broadcasts of professional and collegiate sporting events.
In the United States, DirecTV offers all regional sports networks to all subscribers across the country, but live games and other selected programs are blacked out outside their home markets.
Since 2013, television providers such as Charter Spectrum and Verizon FiOS have charged customers a "regional sports network fee" as a separate item on their bills.
[4][5] In response to high and increasing surcharges for RSNs and local broadcast channels, on March 22, 2023, FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced a proposal to require television providers to advertise only "all-in" pricing, including all programming fees.
An early unnamed version of that network started broadcasting Knicks and Rangers to a small number of subscribers in Manhattan in May 1969.
[9] By the late 1970s another version of this network would launch and be made available to other cable systems in the metropolitan area and it would finally receive the name Madison Square Garden Television in 1980.
Another early network considered by many to be an RSN is Philadelphia's PRISM which launched in 1976 offering coverage of three of the city's major sports teams and movies.
Other SportsChannels were launched in different cities and in 1988, they were formally organized into a group that shared programming and national TV rights.
These services require broadcasters to obtain in-market streaming rights to teams,[15][16] and have a high cost due to RSNs usually being subsidized by subscribers that are not interested in sports.
[14][17] Major League Soccer, which previously broadcast most of its matches regionally on RSNs, switched to a centralized media rights model in the 2023 season; all match telecasts are now produced in-house and carried internationally on the MLS Season Pass subscription service under a ten-year digital rights agreement with Apple Inc..[18][19] In March 2023, Bally Sports parent company Diamond Sports Group filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection,[20] while Warner Bros.
[23] In May 2023, when the rights to the San Diego Padres reverted to the team after Diamond missed a payment, MLB Local Media took over the production of Padres regional games, distributing them via an in-market add-on to MLB.tv, and making agreements to carry the games on local access channels, such as Cox Cable's YurView California.
[24][25][26] In July 2023, MLB Local Media took over the rights to the Arizona Diamondbacks, after Diamond was granted a motion to decline its contract with the team.
[28] In October 2024, MLB Local Media announced that it would begin producing and distributing broadcasts for the Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers, and Minnesota Twins beginning in the 2025 season,[29] although the Brewers would later announce a return to Diamond Sports (since renamed Main Street Sports Group).
[35][36] Some NHL and NBA teams handled the AT&T SportsNet closure by abandoning the RSN model entirely, in favor of a mixture of regional syndication via free-to-air television, and paid streaming services.
[48] The Seattle Kraken also launched the "Kraken Hockey Network" to succeed its agreement with Root Sports Northwest, which is carried primarily by Tegna stations (with KONG in Seattle as flagship) and streams on Prime Video,[49] while the Portland Trail Blazers would later sign a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group to create the "Rip City Television Network" (flagshipped by KUNP in Portland), thus succeeding its own agreement with Root Sports.
Fox Sports Networks, which launched on November 1, 1996, as Fox Sports Net,[51] was created through former parent News Corporation's October 1995 purchase of a 50% equity stake in Liberty Media-owned Prime Sports Networks, co-founded in 1988 by Bill Daniels and Liberty's then-sister company Tele-Communications Inc.[52] The group expanded further in June 1997, Fox/Liberty Networks, the joint venture company operated by News Corporation and Liberty Media, purchased a 40% interest in the Cablevision-owned SportsChannel group.
[53][54] As part of a rebranding effort, the collective branding of the networks – which eventually became "FSN (Region/City)" in 2004 – was extended to Fox Sports (Region/City) (also used from 1996 to 2000) with the start of the 2008 college football season.
In February 2020, the New York Post reported that AT&T had abandoned a plan to divest the channels, after only receiving bids in excess of $500 million (rather than the $1 billion valuation it had expected).
[68][69] Discovery announced on April 7, 2022, that Patrick Crumb, president of AT&T Sports Networks, would report to the yet-to-be-named Chairperson for Warner Bros.
Discovery Sports; Jeff Zucker departed the company upon the completion of the merger, but his successor Chris Licht would only oversee CNN.
[75] The Houston Astros and Rockets acquired WBD's shares in AT&T SportsNet Southwest and rebranded it as Space City Home Network.
In 2014, television station owner Sinclair Broadcast Group established its own sports syndicator known as the American Sports Network (ASN), primarily syndicating broadcasts of college football and basketball from mid-major conferences (some of which were previously associated with ESPN Plus) to stations that it owns and operates.
[101][102] In 2015, Sinclair also acquired regional rights to Major League Soccer's Real Salt Lake, with ASN handling production and distribution of team telecasts within its designated market.
In 2017, the channel was relaunched as Stadium as part of a joint venture with Silver Chalice, which expanded its programming and added a focus on distribution via free ad-supported streaming television (FAST).
Starting in 2023, amid the dismantling of AT&T SportsNet and the Diamond Sports bankruptcy, multiple NBA and NHL teams have pivoted away from the pay television RSN model and returned to primarily carrying their games on free-to-air television via regional syndication, with supplemental distribution via paid OTT services.
[109] The Seattle Kraken similarly made an agreement with Tegna Inc. and Amazon Prime Video, and the Dallas Stars took its media rights to an in-house streaming platform.