Will more teams ink local rights deals with Scripps Sports? The list right now is only two teams deep (the Arizona Coyotes and Vegas Golden Knights), but it could grow if the Diamond Sports Group walks away from more carriage deals.
In an interview with Broadcasting & Cable, Scripps Sports president Brian Lawlor said several teams have spoken with the company and have signed contingency plans in the event more teams are cut loose from the Bally Sports RSNs.
“Every team associated with Bally is concerned about the future,“ Lawlor said. “As a result they are all doing contingency planning for the short term and the longer-term. We’ve been able to advance discussions about contingency plans all the way to actually written contracts that if Bally were to go away, we have agreements already in place that we would be the partner to be able to take over distribution and production and begin immediately.”
Scripps Sports has signed three live rights deals over the last months – a national pact with the WNBA and the aforementioned local deals with the Coyotes and Golden Knights.
Lawlor also claimed that some distributors are pushing back about carrying independent and digital networks airing local sports, despite many of those same distributors cutting ties with RSNs due to exorbitant pricing in recent years.
Lawlor said the biggest obstacle Scripps has been facing is resistance by distributors to carry independent and digital channels that are now carrying the games of teams that are popular locally.
“They’ve had the same way of distributing local sports teams for 30 years and its been through an RSN,“ he said. “Suddenly, the RSN is losing the business and now it’s going to local broadcasters who are standing up independent stations.”
Some distributors have policies not to clear independent stations. They only carry —and pay retransmission consent for — network-affiliated stations.
Looking at where Scripps owns stations, you can make some reasonable assumptions as to which teams have struck contingent agreements with the company. But that would just be speculation based on context clues, and we’ll likely only learn which (if any) teams are heading to Scripps if they part ways with Bally Sports.
