Menu
Media

The bids are in for RSN sale

Fox Sports and NBC Sports stay on sideline for the sale, leaving the media industry to wonder who’s in.

Disney’s Bob Iger will be sorting through offers for the Fox Sports RSNs. A deal could close as early as the first quarter of next year.Getty Images

Fox Sports and NBC Sports — two of the companies that were considered the most likely bidders for all or part of the 22 Fox Sports regional sports networks being sold — did not submit bids last week when they were due.

 

Speculation over the past several months was that NBC Sports would pick off the RSNs in markets where it is the dominant cable operator — places like Atlanta, Detroit and Miami — and Fox Sports would look to buy back the RSNs at a discount. But the lack of bids to Allen & Co., who is handling the sale along with JPMorgan Chase & Co., threw cold water on both of those scenarios.

   

Mark Lazarus, NBC Broadcasting and Sports chairman, went so far as to say that Comcast is not in line to buy any of the Fox RSNs. It was notable that Comcast did not even sign a non-disclosure agreement last month that would have given it access to the bid book for the RSNs.

  

“The government’s not going to let us buy any more where we are heavy in cable — we’ve already been informed of that,” Lazarus said during a recent Fairfield County Sports Commission event in Stamford, Conn. “We can’t buy any of those assets that Disney is going to try to dispose of.”

  

Fox Sports, which continues to operate the RSNs throughout the sales process, still could put forth a bid as that process develops, but it is far from certain that Fox will engage. A deal could close as early as the first quarter of next year.

 

That marks an incredible turnaround from last year, when Fox Sports executives were disappointed to learn that, because of arcane tax rules, the RSNs were included as part of Disney’s $71.3 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets. After all, the RSN group was among the most profitable part of Fox Sports’ business.

  

Since then, Fox has embarked on a slimmed down broadcast-centric strategy that emphasizes national deals for its “New Fox” broadcast channel, plus FS1 and FS2 cable channels.

 

“We really ran the regional business and the national business pretty separately,” Eric Shanks, Fox Sports president, COO and executive producer, said at a recent Bank of America conference. “On the buy side, we didn’t buy rights together.”

 

At deadline last week, it was difficult to determine exactly who bid for the RSNs, with everyone from Sinclair to former rap star Ice Cube showing interest over the past several weeks. The biggest question is whether the RSNs would be sold off as one big group or individually.

 

Importantly, the sale of Fox’s RSNs to Disney triggered a clause in YES Network’s contract that would allow the Yankees to take back ownership of the RSN. Sources said the team already has been in contact with companies interested in investing in the RSN. Sources with knowledge of those talks said all signs point to the Yankees actually taking back ownership of the RSN, which means that the country’s biggest RSN likely will not be part of the final Fox package being sold.

 

Interestingly, that contractual clause would have been triggered if Fox sold YES Network to one of three companies: Disney, Comcast or a company led by one of the Dolans, who operate another RSN in the New York market, MSG Network.

 

The level of uncertainty about how the Fox RSNs will be sold has seeped down to the team level. RSN deals are critical to a team’s business model, so not knowing who their final partner will be in that space or what the budgets will be like is unsettling, one team executive said.

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2018/11/12/Media/RSNs.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2018/11/12/Media/RSNs.aspx

CLOSE