The Utah Jazz will start airing games on a local TV station and new streaming service, becoming the latest sports franchise to seek an alternative to the declining cable model.
Starting next season, the NBA team’s games will appear on local station KJZZ, which is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. That means Jazz fans who don’t get cable can see all the teams’ local broadcasts for free with an antenna. Jazz games will also appear on a new paid streaming service that will include behind-the-scenes team content.
For Sinclair, the move represents a further retreat from the business model it once embraced. The company spent about $10 billion buying pay-TV regional sports networks in 2019, only for the business to implode in recent years.
Jazz games have previously aired in the local market on the regional cable channel AT&T SportsNet, but that deal has expired. And Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., which operates AT&T SportsNet channels in several markets, plans to get out of the business and return the TV rights to the teams.
It brings fresh upheaval to sports fans, who have had to repeatedly change the way they watch teams. Originally, they could see games on free broadcast stations. In later years, as cable TV grew in popularity, those games migrated to regional sports channels, which were flush with cash from their distributors and paid large sums for the rights.
Now, the rise of cord cutting has caused those cable channels to reach fewer people, and teams and leagues are looking to sell their media rights to free over-the-air channels and create their own streaming services to reach more fans.
Terms of the Jazz’s agreement with Sinclair weren’t disclosed.
It remains to be seen whether teams can generate as much money in these new agreements as they have from cable channels. A combination of new streaming subscriptions and greater advertising dollars from reaching more fans could bring in more revenue over time. But if teams fall short, it will hurt their ability to cover expenses such as players’ contracts.
Earlier this year, the WNBA announced a deal to air regular season games on Friday nights on the ION network, owned by Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co. The NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, meanwhile, are broadcasting some games on KTLA 5, a free broadcast station owned by Nexstar Media Group Inc.
For some sports teams, however, breaking free from their cable-TV agreements has been complicated.
In April, the Phoenix Suns announced a new broadcast deal with Gray Television Inc., which owns free local TV stations. But the Suns’ previous broadcaster, Sinclair’s Diamond Sports Group, which is in bankruptcy, alleged that the team breached its contract and violated bankruptcy law by reaching the agreement with Gray. In May, a judge blocked the deal.
