SBJ Media: Sinclair charts new course for Tennis Channel

There’s a new era incoming for Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Tennis Channel following CEO Ken Solomon’s ouster earlier this month.

Rob Weisbord, Sinclair COO and president of local media, pointed to Bill Simon, Sinclair’s EVP, CFO and COO, as instrumental for the company’s growth over the last 18 months. Simon is running day-to-day operations of Tennis Channel, reporting to Weisbord, with Weisbord saying that while Solomon had been the spokesperson for the network, the senior management group has been leading it. That group includes Simon; Bob Whyley, SVP/production; David Edges, SVP (oversees player and tour relations); Andy Reif, SVP/international and programming; Irv Schulman, SVP/national sports sales; and Christina Tesauro/VP of marketing.

Solomon exited Tennis Channel largely due to his involvement in activities not related to the company, including his advisory and board member role for Merit Street Media, owned by Dr. Phil McGraw.

“When Sinclair is writing a check for an employee, we expect 100% of the focus to be on what we're paying them to be and not have multiple focuses,” said Weisbord. “We need to focus on the assets that we own. Ken certainly was the face of Tennis Channel, but it takes a village to run a network.”

Solomon’s firing came during Tennis Channel’s coverage of the U.S. Open and as Sinclair reportedly looks to sell the network . However, Weisbord emphasized that the company has “never publicly stated” that Tennis Channel is for sale.

“We had some inbound inquiries. If we can get accreted value for any asset, we’re always open to look at it,” said Weisbord. “Right now, we’re focused not a sale -- if that happens, great -- but we're focused that we own this operation and that we truly are bullish on the expansion of tennis.”

A growing opportunity

Sinclair launched Pickballtv at the end of 2023, part of a joint venture with the United Pickleball Association. The company is developing a regular studio show for PBTV, similar to what it has on Tennis Channel. “We want to be in all racket sports,” said Weisbord. “It’s definitely a synergistic relationship that we believe will grow the viewership of all racket sports.”

Coming up in the fourth quarter, Sinclair will launch a direct-to-consumer app under the leadership of Matt Graham. It will include additional live and on-demand matches that have been on Tennis Channel+ for the past decade, building off Tennis Media, acquired in 2017.

“The company is really bullish on our growth areas of international expansion,” said Weisbord, noting that TC International launched in 2020 and is now in eight countries. Tennis Channel also hired its first full-time employees outside of the U.S. (in Germany) to build in Europe. “It really is global, and we're really committed to that global strategy.”

Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State are officially joining the Pac-12 beginning in 2026. My colleague Ben Portnoy did an excellent job breaking down the details  of the deal in a new chapter of the never-ending realignment circus.

The Mountain West’s $45 million media deal with CBS and Fox is up in 2026, with the conference hoping its annual per-school distribution could climb from approximately $5 million to $7.5 million. That seems unlikely with four of the conference’s biggest schools departing.

And the Pac-12 still needs to add two more schools to remain an FBS conference. The group’s previous $250 million media rights deal with Fox and ESPN shriveled to a one-year agreement for Oregon State and Washington State home games across The CW and Fox.

A longtime sports media consultant, speaking on the condition of anonymity, described the Mountain West’s position as “very weak” with the four departing schools, and expects the Pac-12’s new deal to pull in what the Mountain West would have, prior to realignment. However, given a smaller conference, schools have the potential to earn a higher share of that media revenue.

The consultant wondered if executives at Stanford and Cal could be thinking they jumped the gun in heading to the ACC given the news of a returning Pac-12. Stanford and Cal receive reduced shares of ACC media revenue at the start in their new home.

A second question is what media companies pursue both the Pac-12 and Mountain West for a new deal.

A longtime media analyst told SBJ they can’t imagine any traditional media partner would pay any more than a “rounding error” for the new Pac-12, but that an additional digital package could be a possibility.

There are certainly media companies out there eager for sports rights, which brings us to DirecTV, Disney, WBD and Charter.

After a particularly nasty carriage dust-up, a deal is done. Disney and DirecTV came to an agreement Saturday morning ahead of college football kickoff, ending a two-week long blackout of Disney and ESPN networks for the carriage provider’s 11 million subscribers.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a media analyst found the timing of the deal to be the most interesting element and wondered what the point of the dispute was at all. “The whole thing honestly seems quite dumb,” said the analyst, pointing a finger directly at DirecTV.

The carriage provider’s CMO, Vince Torres, told investors Thursday that the company lost “not an immaterial amount of customers” -- an avoidant way to confirm yes, indeed, the dispute caused a material amount of churn.

Another weekend without Disney networks would have been a disaster for DirecTV, according to the analyst, with most of, if not all, of the leverage on the Disney side.

The value of college sports to media companies is immense, and Disney has an exorbitant amount of college sports rights. To the analyst, locking down the deal ahead of college games instead of “Monday Night Football” speaks to the increasing importance of college ball.

Part of the carriage deal includes the right to distribute ESPN’s upcoming direct-to-consumer product , nicknamed “flagship,” at no additional cost, which experts say that condition was likely always on the table.

DirecTV and Disney’s squabble came around the same time as last year’s dispute with Charter, though that ended before “MNF” kicked off. That deal added ESPN+ and Disney+ to some of Charter’s Spectrum customers and gave Disney an increase on the subscriber fees it receives from Charter.

From a Disney standpoint, that previous dispute likely shaped the outcome of the DirecTV deal, as the company could not make increased concessions. The analyst told SBJ that the Charter deal set the template for every other provider moving forward, and a media rights expert described last year’s deal as “the change in the industry.”

Speaking of Charter, its early renewal with Warner Bros. Discovery will have heavy implications on sports media rights moving forward.

That deal gave many of Charter’s 13.3 million subscribers Max and Discovery+ for free, and it kept TNT flat, giving WBD better terms than most analysts had been expecting. It had been widely expected that WBD will attempt to secure UFC rights to fill its NBA gap, though that could be less of a priority now that a deal with one of the largest cable providers is done. The media rights expert also wondered to SBJ if Turner Sports would be less aggressive in negotiating rights deals following several months of snapping up properties.

The same logic can be applied for Disney now that the DirecTV deal is locked in. As agreements are secured, it puts less pressure on sports networks to broaden sports portfolios and could even give some wiggle room to cut back.

Next up for WBD are negotiations with Comcast and ... DirecTV.

• Fox’s Friday night college football debut outdrew what WWE had been drawing in the same time slot recently, reports SBJ's Austin Karp. Kansas State-Arizona drew 2.58 million viewers on Friday on the broadcast network, well above the 1.77 million the prior week and the best for any Friday night telecast on Fox since early April.

• With NBC Sports Chicago shutting down Sept. 30, the White Sox have combined with the Bulls and Blackhawks to launch CHSN in October. All of the teams will forgo a rights fee, but my colleague Mike Mazzeo writes the teams believe in the upside of an owned RSN. That line of thought was beginning to bear fruit late last week when a source confirmed to SBJ the new RSN’s first distribution agreement with DirecTV.  

• Riyadh Season Noche UFC, or UFC 306, was aired by ESPN, and the in-person production and ESPN broadcast both appeared to largely go off without a hitch, with no noticeable technical issues during the six 90-second mini-films that, taken together, were meant to tell the history of combat in Mexico from the beginning of time to now, writes SBJ's Adam Stern.

• Prime Video drew 14.96 million viewers for the Bills’ rout of the Dolphins to begin the 2024 “Thursday Night Football” slate, down just 1% from 15.06 million for the Vikings-Eagles “TNF” opener in 2023, reports Karp. Bills-Dolphins is still good enough for the third-best “TNF” audience for Prime Video since it acquired the package prior to the 2022 season.