BRADENTON, Fla. — Pittsburgh sports fans shouldn’t worry about being unable to watch the Pirates’ Opening Day game or any potential Penguins’ Stanley Cup playoff games, even though cable broadcaster AT&T SportsNet’s parent company is reportedly soon to exit the Regional Sports Network (RSN) business.
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Pirates chairman Bob Nutting told The Athletic on Saturday that his club’s March 30 season-opener against the Cincinnati Reds will be broadcast in the Pittsburgh market.
“On Opening Day, you’re gonna be able to turn on the TV and watch the game,” Nutting said. “I’m not sure who’s going to own the RSN, but the broadcast is going to come on.”
The same goes for Pirates games scheduled for regional television broadcasts in April and thereafter, Nutting indicated.
“I don’t see any chance we’re going to lose the broadcast,” Nutting said. “I just don’t think that’s realistic. We have been working for over a year on contingency plans.”
As for the Penguins, their April games and any potential opening-round Stanley Cup playoff games are not in danger of being unavailable to viewers in the Pittsburgh market, a team source said Saturday. The Penguins source is familiar with matters related to the AT&T SportsNet situation, but was granted anonymity by The Athletic because they are not authorized to speak on the subject without the team’s permission.
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that multiple MLB, NHL and NBA teams — including the Pirates and Penguins — received letters from AT&T SportsNet president Patrick Crumb saying, “the business will not have sufficient cash to pay the upcoming rights fees.” Bankruptcy for AT&T SportsNet is on the table, the WSJ reported.
Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. has told teams whose broadcasts are on on three of its networks that it wants to exit the business, per the Wall Street Journal. Affected teams: ◽️NBA: Rockets and Jazz
◽️MLB: Pirates, Astros and Rockies
◽️NHL: Penguinshttps://t.co/OmU5VsGbyg — The Athletic (@TheAthletic) February 25, 2023
AT&T SportsNet is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. The Wall Street Journal reported Crumb’s letter identified March 31 as a date to “reach a deal to transfer ownership of the network” to avoid filing for chapter 7 liquidation.
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“It is a significant challenge for Pittsburgh,” Nutting said. “It’s a significant challenge for baseball overall. There’s no question that the whole system of delivery of content is changing.”
Crumb’s letter caught neither Pirates nor Penguins executives by surprise.
Nutting said the Pirates have been in touch with Warner Bros. Discovery and AT&T SportsNet “for 18 months” and there was “nothing surprising about” the baseball team receiving Crumb’s letter Friday.
The Pirates and Penguins have discussed plans to either partner on a potential new local sports network or at least work together to assure their respective games find a joint-home on another local cable channel, a source with each team said Saturday.
Stepping into the multimedia game would not be foreign for either the Pirates or Penguins.
Nutting, who is the Pirates’ majority owner, comes from a newspaper family. The Penguins are owned by Fenway Sports Group (FSG), whose properties include the Boston Red Sox and New England Sports Network (NESN), an RSN that regionally broadcasts telecasts of the Red Sox and Boston Bruins.
Nutting and FSG founder John Henry have MLB ties, though Nutting said Saturday it was “probably not productive to talk about options that we might have talked about.”
Nutting said the Pirates’ Opening Day broadcast would be produced by AT&T SportsNet employees. The same would be true, at least initially, for any future local broadcasts of Pirates and Penguins games until a full-time solution is determined, the Pirates and Penguins sources said.
Essentially, the teams’ sources said, aside from a potential channel change, the broadcasts of Pirates and Penguins games would be status-quo behind the scenes and on-camera.
Still, whatever comes next for the teams could take time and might not come easy.
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“I think it’s gonna be a painful transition — maybe this year, maybe next year; we’ll see how it plays out,” Nutting said. “I think the end result is going to be better, it just might (take) a little bit of pain to get there.”
MLB and the NHL have each issued statements that said the respective leagues are working teams in affected markets to assure games will remain televised. At a spring training press conference last week at the Toronto Blue Jays facility in Dunedin, Fla., MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said RSN breakups could speed up the league’s goal of eliminating blackouts.
“I hope we get to the point where on the digital side, when you go to MLB.tv, you can buy whatever the heck you want,” Manfred said. “You can buy the out-of-market package. You can buy the local games, two sets of local games — whatever you want. That is, to me, the definition of what is going to be a valuable digital offering going forward.”
Though RSNs are flailing, Pittsburgh remains a strong sports television market as tracked by Nielsen Media Research. The Penguins have consistently ranked atop or near the top of regional hockey ratings since Sidney Crosby’s debut with the NHL team in 2005. And the Pirates’ ratings have outpaced similar-sized markets for the last decade.
According to Sports Business Journal, the Pirates’ local media deal is worth $60 million annually. Each year, AT&T SportsNet broadcasts more than 150 regular-season games as well as spring training games.
(Photo: Charles LeClaire / USA TODAY Sports)