Option for Kansas City Royals fans who’ve cut the cord is advancing, but may be costly
Royals and Sporting Kansas City fans who dropped their cable subscriptions ahead of the 2021 season have been vocal about their displeasure at not being able to see games.
Last year, YouTube TV, Dish Network, Hulu with Live TV and others stopped carrying Bally Sports Kansas City (at the time, it was called Fox Sports Kansas City), leaving fans who stream sports with few options.
But good news is coming for some of the Royals and Sporting KC fans.
The Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns Bally Sports Kansas City, previously announced it was working on an app for fans without a cable subscription that it hoped to have available in 2022.
The New York Post gave an update on those plans, saying Sinclair was working with an investment bank to raise more than $250 million for the app.
This is from a story by the Post’s Josh Kosman: “Sinclair has been telling hedge funds and other potential investors that it aims to charge $23 a month to fans who want to stream games in markets where it owns sports broadcasting rights, sources said.”
There are two things of note.
First, if that is the cost, it won’t be cheap to watch the Royals or Sporting. By comparison an annual MLB.TV subscription, which blacks out games in local markets, is $129.99. The reported price for a Bally Sports Kansas City app would equate to $138 a year if a fan kept it only in-season.
A source told the Post that Sinclair is projecting to have 4.4 million streaming customers by 2027 and it would break even on streaming costs by 2024.
By comparison, here are streaming numbers from whattowatch.com:
- Hulu with Live TV: 4 million (as of Feb. 11, 2021)
- YouTube TV: More than 3 million (as of Oct. 29, 2020)
- Sling TV: 2.374 million subscribers (as of March 31, 2020)
The second noteworthy item from that Post story: fans outside of Kansas City might be out of luck if the app is only made available in markets where Sinclair owns sports broadcasting rights.
For a fan in Des Moines, MLB.TV won’t show Royals, Cubs, Twins, Cardinals, White Sox or Brewers games. So a Bally Sports Kansas City app would be welcome to a fan in Iowa, but it sounds like it may not be available.
Good for fans
Greg Bouris, the former communications director for the MLB Players Association, told the Post he thinks sports teams could take at least a short term loss if Sinclair’s app proves to be successful. That’s because it would take revenue from cable providers.
However, in an earnings call earlier this year, Sinclair president/CEO Christopher Ripley said he believes the direct-to-consumer app for cord-cutters will complement traditional cable viewers.
“Consumers make the choice on how they watch the games, and we and the teams desire to make the programming as accessible as possible, something that today, unfortunately, is not ideal,” Ripley said.
“We believe that ultimately, the incremental revenues from direct-to-consumer will likely more than offset the loss of revenue from churn of subscribers of traditional distributor platforms.“
And Bouris sees a direct-to-consumer app as good for fans.
“If you go a la carte, then less is more,” Bouris told the Post. “I could see this really benefiting the consumer,” who no longer would need to have cable television to watch their local teams.
That sentiment should be good news for cord-cutters in Kansas City.
This story was originally published June 15, 2021 at 11:04 AM.
