DEAL IS DONE – Marquee and Comcast Complete Months Long Negotiations
As I’ve been reporting over the past couple days, the Marquee Sports Network and Comcast deal is complete.
Comcast subscribers put on Marquee. You're good to go to watch your Cubs in the Chicago market!
— Jesse Rogers (@JesseRogersESPN) July 24, 2020
Marquee Sports Network is channel 202 or 1254 for Xfinity subscribers. Channel 202 seems to be the standard definition channel, while 1254 appears to be the HD channel.
Comcast represents 52% of the cable viewers in the Chicago market, and now that a deal is done, an estimated 90% of Chicago’s viewers have the reasonable option to watch Cubs games now that this deal is done. It is because of the customer base Comcast represents that these negotiations took as long as they did.
There are many factors that go into these deals, and from some knowledge of previous negotiations, Marquee/Sinclair/Cubs did not want any provider to upcharge customers for the channel. This was not an issue with other providers as they struck carriage deals, but some suggest this was an issue with Comcast. The other negotiation front has been the price per subscriber, which has been (reportedly) $4 per month.
Cubs President of Business Operations, Crane Kenney has always suggested they needed a catalyst to get this done. “It was a complicated negotiation,” Crane remarked. “Usually there needs to be a catalyst… I said in January, it was likely either going to be the beginning of spring training or the beginning of the regular season as the catalyst to get something done.
“I know it’s been painful for our Xfinity (Comcast) fans to suffer through the long delay but there was a need for a catalyst. It turns out it was opening day. And it turns out opening day was in July, not March.”
The Cubs, while the optics looked bad here, managed to do much better than the Los Angeles Dodgers and the release of their own network. A network that went seven years before striking deals to finally cover more than half of the LA market.
As of now, there has been no further communications about either YouTube TV or Dish Network. To see if you are eligible for Marquee, visit the Marquee website, navigate to the Channel Finder. Interesting tidbit, it has not been updated (as of 7:30 AM July 24th) with the Comcast channels.
Fyi*** I currently have both the regional sports package ($8.25/mo) and the Entertainment Sports Package ($9.95/mo) which I’ve had for a long time. You *might* have to add one or both to your package to get Marquee.
