Last week, YouTube TV backtracked on plans to drop regional Fox Sports networks from its channel lineup. In a brand new take care of Sinclair Broadcast Group, YouTube TV agreed to hold 19 of these 21 networks, excluding solely Fox Sports West and Fox Sports Prime Ticket in Los Angeles (together with the YES Network, which Sinclair partly owns, in New York). In a press launch, Sinclair trumpeted the deal as “ensuring continued access for millions of fans.”
Sadly, that’s not the entire story. Around the nation, YouTube TV subscribers are discovering that they will not watch the regional Fox Sports networks they have been getting earlier than. In some circumstances, subscribers have misplaced all regional sports activities protection, but they’re paying the identical $50 per thirty days as subscribers in different components of the state or area, the place the identical group protection stays accessible.
As a end result, YouTube TV is both the best live TV streaming service for sports or one which sports activities followers ought to keep away from. It all is determined by the place you reside.
Where YouTube TV dropped regional sports activities
YouTube wouldn’t remark for this story, so the one approach to determine the place YouTube TV nonetheless carries regional sports activities is by plugging your zip code into its website.
But after taking a look at complaints on Reddit and Twitter, a sample emerged: The farther you might be from the place an area group performs, the extra probably it’s that YouTube TV has dropped that group’s protection in your space.
Sinclair appeared to substantiate this, saying in an announcement that YouTube is deciding to not carry regional sports activities in “outer zones” of sure markets.
“[T]hey alone determine whether or not to carry an RSN in an outer zone, where providing access to the channel is allowed but not required,” Sinclair mentioned. “It was YouTube’s decision to drop certain outer zones, without dropping the price charged to subscribers who are losing this content.”
Below are some cities the place YouTube TV has dropped regional Fox Sports networks. Keep in thoughts that in all circumstances, Hulu + Live TV continues to hold these channels for $55 per thirty days.
- Charleston, SC: Fox Sports Carolinas, South, and Southeast dropped
- Asheville/Greenville, NC: Fox Sports Carolinas and South dropped
- Des Moines and Dubuque, Iowa: Fox Sports Midwest and North dropped
- Houston and Midland, Texas: Fox Sports Southwest dropped
- Jacksonville, Pensacola, and Tallahassee, Fla.: Fox Sports Florida and Sun dropped
- Tampa, Fla.: Fox Sports Florida dropped
- Indianapolis, Ind.: Fox Sports Ohio dropped
- Lincoln and Omaha, Neb.: Fox Sports Kansas City dropped
- Wichita, Kan: Fox Sports Kansas City dropped
- Jackson and Tupelo, Miss: Fox Sports South and Southeast dropped
- Louisville, Ky.: Fox Sports Ohio and South dropped
- Toledo, Ohio: Fox Sports Ohio and Detroit dropped
- Huntington, W.Va.: Fox Sports Ohio dropped
This will not be a whole checklist, however a sampling that reveals how YouTube TV now has main holes in its regional sports activities protection all through the United States. In addition to the examples above, YouTube TV will not be carrying the YES Network in New York or Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket within the Los Angeles space. Unlike Hulu, YouTube TV additionally doesn’t have a deal to hold Marquee Sports Network, which can present Chicago Cubs video games this yr.
An uncommon deal
Let’s again up a little bit bit and make a distinction: YouTube TV has not dropped the nationwide FS1 and FS2 sports activities channels, that are owned by Fox Corporation. Fox regional sports activities networks (or RSNs), regardless of their title, have been acquired by Sinclair final yr, when Disney divested the networks as a part of its 21st Century Fox acquisition.
Anyway, since Sinclair took over these regional sports activities networks, it’s misplaced a number of distribution offers. Dish Network dropped Fox RSNs from each its satellite tv for pc service and Sling TV streaming service over the summer time and doesn’t seem eager to get them back. FuboTV, which as soon as prided itself on its sports programming, quietly dropped Fox RSNs in early January, and PlayStation Vue shut down later that month.
While I’m not aware about what was taking place behind the scenes with YouTube, I think about Sinclair was below loads of stress to succeed in an settlement. The conventional TV enterprise is now in steep decline, and whereas streaming companies like YouTube TV aren’t rising shortly sufficient to compensate, they’re not less than slowing the speed of decay. With greater than two million subscribers, YouTube TV is without doubt one of the solely pay TV bundles whose subscriber numbers are rising each quarter.
YouTube was probably dealing with stress as properly, each from subscribers threatening to give up if it dropped regional sports activities and from a want to not lose a pricing edge over Hulu + Live TV, which has 1.2 million extra subscribers regardless of being $5-per-month costlier. Thus, the businesses have landed on a deal during which YouTube TV is excluding some regional Fox Sports networks and solely permitting a subset of shoppers to entry the others.
We can solely guess at how this works out financially. It might permit YouTube to make use of its newfound price financial savings in sports-free markets to soak up value hikes for sports activities in others. Or as one Redditor theorized final week, it might permit YouTube to keep away from minimal subscriber necessities in areas the place sports activities groups are much less common. In any case, carving up regional sports activities protection this fashion is extremely uncommon.
“In my entire history of covering this space, I’ve never seen this happen,” Rich Greenfield, a media trade analyst at LightShed Partners, mentioned in an interview this week.
That’s in all probability as a result of it doesn’t make loads of sense, particularly for a service that’s accessible nationwide. From a advertising perspective, any claims YouTube now makes about its native sports activities protection ought to now include a giant asterisk, and anybody who needs to advocate YouTube TV to their mates (or, ahem, readers) might want to suppose twice about the place these individuals dwell.
It’s a messy state of affairs for YouTube TV, however a good messier one for Sinclair, which could now must entertain much more patchwork offers because it negotiates future contracts with different TV suppliers. An enormous one, Greenfield factors out, is Comcast, whose settlement with Sinclair comes up for renewal in September.
“If I was looking at my contract, I’d be saying, ‘Why can’t I do this, too?’” Greenfield mentioned.
As with so much else in cord-cutting, I’d prefer to suppose this breakdown is the beginning of a much bigger disruption, during which followers can entry dwell sports activities with out being tied to a giant bundle of TV channels in any respect. But the trail from right here to there may be going to be fraught with extra prospects getting a uncooked deal.
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