Sports Bets Pay Off For Local Stations

After major upheaval in the regional sports network (RSN) business spurred by the COVID pandemic, local broadcasters seized the opportunity. Through 2023 and 2024, station groups signed a string of rights deals with professional basketball, hockey and baseball teams in local markets, in many cases significantly expanding distribution of their games compared to the relative reach of RSNs through cable alone.

Those big bets have paid off, according to top executives speaking last Wednesday at TVNewsCheck’s

Local TV Strategies conference co-located with NAB New York. Over the past year the over-the-air local sports business has solidified, with strong ratings and a good response from advertisers. Several initial deals have been extended and new relationships formed with surviving RSNs. Groups are now looking to further monetize their rights through tighter branding integrations with teams and further customization of their content.

A Broader Reach

Tegna was one of the early movers, signing deals with various NBA, MLB, NHL and WNBA teams. It extended agreements with the NBA’s Denver Nuggets and NHL’s Colorado Avalanche last month.

“Our thesis was this would be good for fans and good for teams, to reach more than had been the case [with RSN distribution],” said Brad Ramsey, Tegna SVP of media ops and head of sports rights, speaking on the panel “Local Sports: Expanding Audience and Revenue,” moderated by this reporter.

Tegna modeled that the audience it could reach with its local stations would be 250%-300% larger than what the RSN previously reached in a given market. After making it through its first full season of NBA and NHL games in 2024-25, Tegna exceeded that target in 13 of the 14 markets where it signed deals, said Ramsey, with “still very strong numbers” in the one market where it didn’t.

“It gave us deeper relationships with existing advertisers and sponsors, and it opened the door to new advertisers and sponsors,” Ramsey said. “We’re getting smarter as the months and quarters and years go on. It’s a different kind of sponsorship sale.”

While local sports was a new business for Tegna, it was able to leverage the sales teams it already had embedded in each market to move the inventory. There was a “learning curve” for salespeople in figuring out how to balance the needs of sponsors with the needs of the teams, but Ramsey said the pace of sponsorships has exceeded Tegna’s initial expectations.

“It’s a really exciting kind of sponsorship set that we’re able to do integrations in games that we weren’t able to do in a newscast,” Ramsey said.

Each of the 14 teams Tegna works with also have their own direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming app. In most markets the teams sell their own streaming inventory, but in the case of the NHL’s Seattle Kraken Tegna manages all of the spot inventory for the team’s streaming product, which is carried by Amazon Prime Video.

One of the benefits of buying a branded sponsorship in Tegna’s OTA game coverage instead of a traditional spot is that the sponsorship also gets seen in the team’s DTC product, and thus reaches a wider range of demographics.

“I like to say a game is a game is a game, regardless of the screen it’s on,” said Ramsey. “So when we sell a halftime sponsorship to Hyundai that’s appearing across all screens, the demo might vary screen to screen, but we’re reaching all of the demos.”

Second-Screen Success

Scripps has enjoyed great early success in ratings and traditional ad sales with its foray into sports, buoyed by the momentum of two championship teams in Las Vegas in the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights and the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces. Its viewership continues to grow on year-over-year and month-over-month bases, said Tony Lamerato, E.W. Scripps VP, local media sales.

But Scripps has taken a different approach to streaming, creating DTC apps in partnership with three of the four NHL teams it has deals with, including the Golden Knights, Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning. Scripps was also the first NHL rightsholder to do a sports gambling integration, by partnering with Circus Sportbook in Las Vegas.

“Never done before,” Lamerato said. “But these are the unique opportunities to unlock all-new value for both the advertiser and for the fans, and it was really an ‘altcast’ which received great reviews. And that’s going to open the window, I think, to these second viewing experiences, where you can sell merchandise, you can help sell airfare, help hotels sell rooms that are open.”

Lamerato said that Scripps also views the DTC apps as being essential for “super-fans” who want to follow their teams on the go through portable devices, particularly when time differences put a live game in conflict with other commitments (such as a child’s afternoon soccer practice).

“Our goal is to surround the fan, give access to the fan anyway they would like to watch it,” he said. “And that’s where we’re growing.”

Filling Gaps For Fans

Newly formed station group Rincon Broadcasting is approaching the local TV business differently than big groups like Tegna and Scripps, which have generally launched local sports in markets where they have a duopoly and can use the second station to carry live games and shoulder programming. Rincon founder Todd Parkin thinks that going forward instead of “a zero sum game where somebody gets all the rights,” sports rights are going to continue to be divided up more and more between OTA, streaming and FAST channels,

“As a small broadcaster, what I see is we’re here to fill gaps,” Parkin said.

Through their news programming Rincon stations can become “a community partner” to both teams and their local fans, Parkin said, which would like to partner with teams on “in-stadium activations” that help promote merchandise and ticket sales. He also suggested that ATSC 3.0 broadcasts could eventually be used to deliver encrypted sports content. That would not necessarily be in a pay-per-view format, but instead as exclusive “VIP Access” behind-the-scenes shoulder content that teams could offer on a targeted basis to their most loyal fans.

With the divvying up of rights across various distribution platforms, it is becoming increasingly harder for fans to simply find their team’s games. Parkin said that is something the industry as a whole needs to focus on.

“One of the things that we should be all thinking about is the fan experience,” he said. “So if you’re making it harder for fans to find the content, I think you have to have other features.”

An RSN Reborn

While the RSN shakeup created the sports rights opportunity for local broadcasters, what was once the biggest RSN is still very much alive. After emerging from bankruptcy, FanDuel Sports Network (formerly Diamond Sports Group) is currently operating 15 networks that cover 29 MLB, NBA and NHL teams and two WNBA teams.

The company, now under the ownership of Main Street Sports Group, is also investing to grow its business. It hired former ESPN executive Norby Williamson to oversee the development of new shoulder programming, including Golic & Golic and a whiparound show called Countdown Live, and has created a brand-new DTC app. FanDuel has also reached deals with local broadcasters to share rights for several teams, which FanDuel Sports Network CRO Eric Ratchman said can be used as a “wide funnel” to eventually gain new subscribers.

“We partner with all of our teams,” Ratchman said. “They put a certain number of games out in front of the wall on broadcast, that act as a funnel going into cable subscriptions or our DTC product. So we give wide access for the more casual fan, and then drive them into more of a subscription product, whether it be our direct-to-consumer product or on cable or satellite.”

FanDuel’s MLB viewership was up 55% this past season. When combining the ratings across its 15 networks, Ratchman said, the company is “delivering national-type ratings” for overall MLB viewership that are comparable to ESPN or TNT.

“So it’s a huge impact for an advertiser to come in and have national-type offerings and sponsorships, but be able to target those down to the fans that really care at the local market,” Ratchman said. “And I think that’s the unique advantage of what we can offer, is that scale with local targeting.”

Like other RSNs, FanDuel is well-versed in doing brand integrations for sponsors in its traditional linear broadcasts. But Ratchman said the new DTC app provides a new level of flexibility.

“It’s super dynamic, and we can create advertising opportunities beyond the in-broadcast integration, things like squeezebacks and L-bars,” Ratchman said. “If someone hits a home run, OK, it’s a squeezeback, and now you have a sponsor to come in and sponsor that moment with free chicken wings, or whatever it is.”

Exploiting IP’s Flexibility

For years IP delivery vendor LTN has handled contribution and distribution feeds for a number of RSNs and local broadcasters, using its managed IP network. It has also recently enjoyed rapid growth in distributing live sports feeds to OTT platforms.

LTN’s ability to support targeting and customization within live feeds has definitely solidified the company’s business with RSNs, said Rick Young LTN SVP and head of global product.

“Over the last several years, our relationships with the RSNs have really grown,” Young said. “And I think that that is directly related to our ability to customize and target, whether you’re talking about a specific game, a specific match, or a channel broadly, a linear channel broadly, to a specific region. That’s sort of the inherent nature and inherent advantage of IP versus legacy distribution methods like satellite.”

For example, LTN is currently working with an RSN that already has MVPD and streaming distribution for its main channel to create a FAST channel version of it in a highly automated way. LTN already performs similar work for local stations in creating customized news channels.

LTN performs content customization on live sports feeds for TelevisaUnivision’s Vix streaming platform, tailoring them with different language and graphics packages. It is also working with local broadcasters that don’t do their own production of games, but instead take in a feed from the team or another third party, by handling master control tasks like rolling breaks and switching feeds.

“Don’t think about it as just one set of commercials that go to all of the affiliates of that ball game,” Young said. “But think about if you can automate four different versions of ad payload, in-game ads for four different markets, really easily, really simply.”

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