It was about two months ago when The Wall Street Journal reported that NBC was thinking about selling their regional sports networks, or perhaps moving them to Peacock instead, and going the streaming route.

One of the things that you, the reader, brought up back then was Sinclair’s presence in the RSN world, and the 2019 purchase of 21 regional sports networks from FOX. That was a $9.6 billion purchase that saw the stations rebranded under the “Bally Sports” umbrella.

Sure enough, here comes Josh Kosman at the New York Post with a report about Sinclair bidding for the NBC regionals, which includes NBC Sports Philadelphia:

Sinclair Broadcasting Group, already the nation’s dominant owner of regional sports networks, has made an offer to acquire NBCUniversal’s seven regional sports networks, The Post has learned.

If Sinclair succeeds in buying the RSNs, it would add dozens of popular National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball teams to its already vast collection of sports broadcast rights, including the Chicago Bulls, Boston Celtics, Philadelphia 76ers, Washington Capitals, Golden State Warriors, and San Francisco Giants.

I have some notes/thoughts on Sinclair possibly getting involved here, in no particular order:

  • The broadcast contracts between NBC Sports Philadelphia and the various sports teams are pretty much ironclad. Any sale or shift would have to be approved by the Phillies, Sixers, and Flyers,* who all have unique arrangements with the network.
  • Any potential buyer would take on those contracts, which is what makes a RSN valuable in the first place. If NBC Sports Philadelphia doesn’t have the rights to any games, who is buying the network?
  • *The Flyers, as you know, are owned by Comcast Spectacor, which is a subsidiary of Comcast. NBC Sports Philadelphia’s parent company is the NBC Sports Group, and their parent company is NBC Universal, whose parent company is…. Comcast. So the Flyers, Wells Fargo Center, and NBCSP all exist under some part of the Comcast umbrella. If there’s a sale, then one property moves out from under the umbrella.
  • The Phillies own a 25% stake in NBC Sports Philadelphia. That happened when both sides agreed to that 25 year, $2.5 billion dollar agreement back in 2014, which gave the Phils the ownership stake and a portion of advertising revenue.

It’s all very fascinating. We’re living in a world now with cord cutting and streaming, which has really turned traditional broadcasting upside down. There are a lot of jobs and a lot of livelihoods attached to these properties, and you wonder what becomes of the folks who work at NBC Sports Philadelphia, if a sale does take place.