Comcast is once again ruffling feathers over the company’s hard-line policy regarding its regional sports network negotiations.
Now, the cable provider’s ongoing dispute with Chicago Sports Network (CHSN) is making headlines. The newly launched regional sports network, which replaced NBC Sports Chicago as the home of the Bulls, White Sox, and Blackhawks last year, has yet to strike a deal with Comcast, one of the city’s largest pay-TV distributors.
Chicago Bulls president Michael Reinsdorf has had enough. Speaking at a Crain’s Chicago Business real estate event on Thursday, Reinsdorf criticized Comcast’s negotiating tactics. “To me, it’s bad faith,” he said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. It’s discriminatory. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
In recent years, Comcast has been steadfast in its desire to place regional sports networks on a higher, more expensive digital tier of its Xfinity cable systems. In doing so, the company has refused to keep these channels on its more widely distributed expanded basic tiers, where regional sports networks have traditionally been placed.
The reasoning behind this is simple. Regional sports networks are often some of the most expensive channels in terms of carriage fees charged to cable and satellite providers like Comcast, but not everybody watches them. Moving these channels to a higher tier can help keep costs down for customers without regional sports networks.
Of course, this severely reduces the carriage revenue that these channels can earn and, thereby, the rights fees they can afford to pay to teams.
Most importantly, fans become victims when neither side will budge. “It’s disappointing you can’t go to bars and restaurants to get games,” Reinsdorf said. “They’re costing people money, they’re costing people enjoyment, and to me, that’s not right.”
Unfortunately for Reinsdorf and CHSN, Comcast has shown it will not budge in these negotiations. That is, unless the company is afraid of the political repercussions of darkening a channel on its cable systems, as was the case recently with YES Network.
