Brewers games won’t be on streaming services
Milwaukee Brewers fans who don't fire up their smart TVs until opening day might be surprised to discover their streaming service no longer carries Fox Sports Wisconsin.
It's something cord-cutting Bucks fans have already realized. After services such as YouTubeTV and Hulu+LiveTV dropped Sinclair-owned regional sports networks (RSNs) in October, options to watch channels like FS Wisconsin have dwindled.
Essentially, fans will either need to pay for a cable subscription like Spectrum or for AT&TVNOW, a service that takes the place of previous "over-thetop" offerings from AT&T and DIRECTV and doesn't insist on a contract but will cost $85 a month for the "Choice" package that includes FSW.
Spectrum does have an introductory rate for its "Select" package that includes FSW at $45, but that rate is for 12 months and for those who haven't subscribed to any Spectrum services in the past 30 days.
"The bad news is that it is very unlikely that Fox Sports Wisconsin is coming back to Hulu Live TV or YouTube TV anytime soon," said Jason Gurwin, cofounder of The Streamable, a site that follows the TV industry's machinations and also enables readers to find a streaming service for any content, including Brewers games, in addition to service recommendations based on interest.
"Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley was asked about this on an earnings call and he kind of hemmed and hawed around giving a straightforward answer, which in my opinion means they haven't made a lot of progress. From a financial standpoint, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for Hulu Live and YouTubeTV to add back the regional sports networks."
The reason for that, Gurwin noted, are basic economics.
"A very small percentage of viewers from a streaming TV package are actually watching an RSN, 5 to 10% of subscribers. The 90% of subscribers who don't watch it are subsidizing the 10% that do," Gurwin said. "Given that an RSN is one of the most expensive channels in a cable bundle, it's just not sustainable for these packages. Even at a more expensive $65 a month, the services are more or less breaking even on the carriage fees that they pay to carry all the channels in the bundle."
Sinclair, the company that now owns Fox Sports Wisconsin — soon to be rebranded as Bally Sports Wisconsin — said it remains committed to coming to an agreement with Hulu and YouTube.
“At no time have we demanded exorbitant fees for these channels," a Sinclair spokesman said. "Instead, we have consistently offered both pay TV providers extremely fair deals in line with what hundreds of other TV services have agreed to and continue to agree to.
"However, despite high-profile ad campaigns and website claims touting their live sports content, we have yet to see that same commitment from either provider to put consumers first. Unfortunately, at this point we have no choice but to conclude that neither Disney (which owns Hulu) nor Google (which owns YouTube) is willing to engage in good faith discussions or return the RSNs to their platforms.”
Gurwin said it's hard to blame one individual for the situation, and teams like the Brewers and Bucks don't have the leverage to force change.
"The Brewers had one of the lowest rights-fees deals in the entire sports industry, getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 25 million (dollars) a year," Gurwin said. "Their latest deal, it hasn't been disclosed how much it's worth, but let's say it's $40 million a year. When those rights fees go up, all these RSNs try to charge a higher fee to cable providers and streaming providers. As a result, they have more costs, and then they have to raise the cost to consumers. And when they raise cost to consumers, consumers drop the services . ... There has to be a new model for this to be sustainable going forward."
Gurwin also noted that the nature of company consolidation (such as CBS with Viacom) meant streaming services or cable providers were compelled to buy larger swaths of programming just to secure core channels.
Gurwin added that the Brewers didn't have a lot of options other than re-up with Fox Sports Wisconsin, a move announced in February.
"There wasn't another regional sports network they could have done," he said. "Five or 10 years ago, what a lot of teams did as their leverage is they went and found another company to partner with to launch their own regional sports network where they'd have equity in the business. This happened in Houston and it ended up being a terrible mess that the regional sports network ended up bankrupt.
"For now, either the option was either re-up with Sincalir or they could have theoretically tried to do a direct-to-consumer business where the Brewers partner with the Bucks and maybe get the rights to the (Minnesota) Wild and do their own thing, but the economics to that are challenging as well."
Fox Sports Wisconsin, one of several RSNs divested after the Fox-Disney merger in 2019 and no longer related to the Fox parent company, will soon officially rebrand as Bally Sports Wisconsin, presumably by April 1 in time for the Brewers' home opener against the Minnesota Twins.
Gurwin said he expects Bally Sports Wisconsin will offer an online app at that point, but access to content will depend on login credentials from a cable or AT&T service, similar to how the current Fox Sports Go app operates. Both the Sinclair spokesman and Gurwin expect a direct-to-consumer offering — access to the app and Brewers games without a larger cable package — to be available no earlier than 2022, and there are challenges.
"The thing that still is uncertain is what that direct-to-consumer product could be," Gurwin said. "Is it going to have live games? Is it just going to have the shoulder programming around live games? Is it going to be a subset of games? The clarity around that isn't super clear, and how they would actually make that work financially isn't clear, either.
"About 60,000 people watch the Brewers on average. If you look at the economics, let's say they have $35 to 40 million rights fees. You would need 60,000 people to play $50 a month for the entire year to just cover those rights fees for a single channel. People are already talking that it's too expensive for $65 a month for an entire bundle of cable channels."
Gurwin believes the relationship with a sports-betting entity like Bally's could be the "secret sauce" to making a direct-to-consumer product work, with a lower price point for the TV service if consumers also agree to spend a certain amount of money gambling. But that would require online betting to be legal in Wisconsin; currently, it's not.
Gurwin says the viewing experience for fans who do have access to Brewers games will largely be the same under the Bally's banner.
"Even though it's not legal in Wisconsin, I think you'll start seeing (gambling references) more layered in (the broadcasts), maybe some free-to-play type things. What do you think will happen in this at-bat? And add that into the app. That's the bridge; if you can get people engaged in the game using free-to-play, you can get people to start spending money when it does because legal."