Regional sports network
A regional sports network in the United States and Canada is a television channel that presents sports programming to a local media market or geographical region. Such channels often focus on one or a few teams in Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, or the National Hockey League. Minor league sports, college sports, and high school sports may also be shown on such networks.
Some RSNs originated as premium channels. Since the 1990s, they have commonly been distributed through the expanded basic tiers of cable television and IPTV services. Direct broadcast satellite providers may require subscribers to purchase a higher programming tier or a specialized sports tier to receive local and out-of-market regional sports networks.
Due to the rise in cord cutting, some RSNs have closed in the 2020s, with teams and leagues moving some games to free-to-air and over-the-top television services.
Overview
Viewership and advertising revenue on RSNs are highest during live broadcasts of professional and collegiate sporting events. These broadcasts are often the source content for out-of-market sports packages. During the rest of the day, these channels show news programs covering local and national sports, magazine and discussion programs relating to a team or collegiate conference, fishing and hunting programs, and in-studio video simulcasts of sports radio programs. RSNs also rerun sports events from the recent and distant past. Some RSNs air infomercials. 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.Regional sports networks are generally among the most expensive channels carried by cable television providers. A typical RSN, as of 2024, carries a monthly retransmission fee of $3.50 to $8 per subscriber, double to triple what they charged in 2012 and second only to the $9.42 rate ESPN charges. RSNs justify these high prices by citing demand for the local sports teams they carry, particularly those in Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League, as well as college teams that have large and loyal fanbases. Carriage disputes between distributors and RSNs are often controversial and protracted. 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. 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.
In Canada, Sportsnet operates four regional sports networks, and the otherwise nationally distributed TSN also maintains some regional operations. This differs from the operational structure of RSNs in the United States, which are independently operated from national sports networks.
Some sports teams own some or all of their respective RSNs. For example, the New York Rangers and New York Knicks have long co-owned their RSN, MSG; they also have purchased the rights to the Rangers' local rivals, the New York Islanders and New Jersey Devils. MSG also owns the rights to the Buffalo Sabres, but the Sabres produce their own games for MSG Western New York, a separate channel managed by MSG and Pegula Sports and Entertainment, owners of the Sabres.
History
The first regional sports network is considered to be the Madison Square Garden Network. An early unnamed version of that network started broadcasting Knicks and Rangers to a small number of subscribers in Manhattan in May 1969. 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.In 1976, Cablevision launched a new service providing coverage of Long Island sports. This channel would be renamed SportsChannel New York in 1979 and became the first channel to resemble a modern regional sports network. Other SportsChannels were launched in different cities and in 1988, they were formally organized into a group that shared programming and national TV rights.
During the 1990s, some teams experimented with pay-per-view or premium television broadcasts of games, which were generally unpopular. The Portland Trail Blazers ran BlazerVision, which charged a fee for every game, and which blacked out NBA on TNT coverage of Trail Blazer playoff games for fans within of Portland. The Chicago Blackhawks broadcast games exclusively on Hawkvision between 1992 and 1995.
As sports fans began to prefer watching their favorite teams on television rather than in person, RSNs became a very important source of revenue for professional teams and collegiate conferences. By 2011, regional sports networks were integral to the financial health of many U.S. sports ventures. Teams in smaller media markets were often disadvantaged by their reliance on RSNs, whereas teams in larger markets could negotiate more lucrative media rights deals.
Impact of cord-cutting, shifts to free-to-air and OTT
In the 21st century, the rise of cord-cutting has led to decreasing cable and satellite television subscriber numbers in the U.S., which in turn has reduced the revenue that RSNs receive from television provider subscriber fees and advertising. These have resulted in an increasing erosion to the RSN market, and attempts to launch over-the-top services at RSNs. These services require broadcasters to obtain in-market streaming rights to teams, and have a high cost due to RSNs usually being subsidized by subscribers that are not interested in sports. 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.. In March 2023, Bally Sports parent company Diamond Sports Group filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, while Warner Bros. Discovery Sports announced its intent to exit the regional sports market by divesting its AT&T SportsNet channels.Major League Baseball established a local media department prior to the 2023 season, using resources from MLB Network, to produce telecasts for teams whose RSNs would become unable to broadcast their teams' games. 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. The broadcasts maintain team-contracted staff, such as commentators. 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. The Colorado Rockies also joined MLB Local Media for the 2024 season amid the closure of AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain. 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, although the Brewers would later announce a return to Diamond Sports. Also in 2025, the Diamondbacks, Guardians, Padres, and Rockies would announce that they would simulcast a package of games on Tegna stations in each team's home market; while the Twins would agree to deals with Fox and Gray Media. The Texas Rangers' contract with Diamond expired after the 2024 season; the team would ultimately create the Rangers Sports Network, which operates similarly to MLB Local Media, but with a direct-to-consumer package hosted by Victory+ and a package of games syndicated on over the air stations within the Rangers' regional market. The Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins, Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals, and Tampa Bay Rays, while remaining with the Bally Sports RSNs, would also agree to syndicate packages of games on regional over the air stations as well. Towards the end of the 2025 season, the Seattle Mariners announced that they would shut down Root Sports Northwest; MLB Local Media would take over the team's distribution rights in 2026 after handling broadcast production in 2025. The Washington Nationals would also announce that MLB Local Media would take over the production and distribution of their games in 2026, having recently settled a long-running dispute with the Baltimore Orioles and MASN, who had been the previous carrier of Nationals games.
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. The Arizona Coyotes, whose games were formerly on Bally Sports Arizona, signed a contract with Scripps, then deactivated as a franchise the following year and sold its hockey operations to the Utah Mammoth expansion team. The Mammoth, first known as the Utah Hockey Club, produced and distributed games using an in-house media operation that was established for the Utah Jazz. After also losing the Phoenix Suns' rights to Gray Television, Bally Sports Arizona shut down entirely in October 2023.
Ahead of the 2024–25 NBA and NHL seasons, more teams ended their contracts with Diamond Sports Group in favor of an FTA/OTT model, including the Dallas Mavericks, Florida Panthers, and the New Orleans Pelicans. After the Seattle Mariners acquired WBD's stake in Root Sports Northwest, the Portland Trail Blazers and Seattle Kraken similarly exited the network, partnering on FTA/OTT models with Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tegna Inc., respectively. Three teams based in Chicago would take a different approach to the challenges faced by cord-cutting. In June 2024, the Blackhawks, Bulls, and White Sox would announce the creation of Chicago Sports Network later that year. While the channel was effectively a new RSN, the channel would be available over the air in addition to offering its OTT service and carriage via various cable and satellite providers in the market. Meanwhile, the Dallas Stars would announce that they would stream their games on Victory+, a newly-created free ad-supported streaming television platform; the Anaheim Ducks would later join the Victory+ platform while simulcasting most games on over the air television in the Los Angeles market. Before the 2025–26 NHL season, the Tampa Bay Lightning would leave FanDuel Sports and announce a deal with Scripps Sports. Several NBA and NHL teams that have remained on the FanDuel Sports Networks have sold packages of game simulcasts to OTA stations within their regional markets.
While the FTA/OTT approach can improve viewership by making a team's telecasts more accessible to viewers, the team can lose out on the guaranteed revenue generated by a rights fee from an RSN: both the Jazz and Suns experienced a drop in revenue from their shift to OTA broadcasts. Jazz owner Ryan Smith stated that he wasn't as concerned about the loss of RSN revenue, since he believed that the team's other revenue streams benefited from the wider accessibility of the team's broadcasts. In the NBA, a reduction in RSN revenue can also be offset by contributions from the league's revenue sharing agreement.