Marquee and YouTube TV Less Likely, Comcast Deal Not Close

I dislike this news. I am an Xfinity customer that will be left in the dark once the start of the regular season begins. I’m not switching to AT&T because of bad customer service experiences in the past and my only real draw to an internet based cable service has been YouTube TV. But it would appear I’m out of luck, unless I want to add Live TV to my Hulu+subscription.

According to Amy McLean of CableFax, Sinclair is having a rough go at the negotiating table. On Thursday, Sinclair and YouTube TV agreed upon a deal to keep Sinclair programming on their service – but only 19 of their 21 RSN’s. Missing from the deal was the Fox Sports West, YES Network, Prime Ticket, and Marquee Sports Network. One of Sinclair’s talking points has been their ability to leverage their Fox programming to sell providers on adding their sports content in a bundled price – which would likely save subscribers money.

It is of note that Sinclair and YouTube TV did not agree to RSN’s in the country’s three largest markets; New York, LA, and Chicago. Perhaps this is due to a larger subscriber base and deals for RSN’s in large markets can get convoluted. When 80% of your subscribers come from those three metro-areas and only a fraction actually watch sports, a RSN fee for all subscribers is a tough pill.

As for Xfinity, the Comcast/Sinclair contract is coming up and there have been reported deadlines of June, August, and September for new contracts. What I have noticed in my limited experience researching cable contracts is, one, they usually go to the 25th hour and two, there is rarely a deal outside a regular contract term.

This isn’t to say Xfinity and Sinclair can come to terms on a Marquee deal before the rest of the networks are negotiated. It does seem to defeat the purpose of why Sinclair got into the RSN game to begin with. That was to leverage their entire catalog to gain households. Gaining households increases revenue. Increasing revenue makes a lot of investors really, really happy.

Take the Tennis Channel for example. Before Sinclair purchased the network, they were in 30 million homes. Looking at them now, the channel has doubled their reach and is in 60 million households. This was done by leveraging all of Sinclair’s content, and it worked, in one small example.

We have heard scuttlebutt that the two sides are hoping for a marriage before the start of the regular season. That hope is communicated from both Marquee and Xfinity. In fact, I had called for a billing question on Thursday and asked about Marquee. The rep actually pulled a scripted response suggesting that negotiations are ongoing and that they hoped to have Marquee soon. I don’t know if soon was relative to an impatient Cubs fan’s timetable or soon meant by the end of the season. But that gave me a touch of hope.

Still, I’m not holding out hope for Xfinity to land a deal before the start of the season. Why would they negotiate a more expensive carriage deal today, when they will be negotiating a larger Sinclair deal in a couple months? It is very unlikely that they will drop Fox or other Sinclair programming, they understand that they broadcast to the largest audience in Chicago, and they can likely bundle Marquee when there’s a larger conversation to be had.

It’s also unlikely that Xfinity would lose many subscribers over this. Especially if there’s the promise that they’re working on a deal. But, if you’re like myself, you can’t just miss Cubs games while CEO’s fight over 50 cents on a carriage deal. Especially knowing their biggest decision of the day is if Jeeves should drive the Black Matte or Charcoal Bentley. So, I will likely switch, or maybe just add? I don’t really know yet…

This entire thing has become so very complicated. Here’s an example of what I will need to do to watch Cubs games this summer (barring any changes).

First, I would need to ditch Xfinity, which my wife has just gotten used to the Voice Remote and will hate getting rid of. EVERYTHING in our house is voice activated. Our lights, our TV’s, changing stations, our door, our thermostat. If there were voice controls for our kids, I think we’d download the app tomorrow. So now we would change to Hulu Live TV, which I imagine we would control with our Samsung TV remote. This remote has no numbers, and no play/pause for OnDemand programming.

Oh, since we have kids thay play video games, their school has them doing homework on Chromebooks, we already stream Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+, and I work out of the house quite a bit through the month – we will max out our 1 TB cap with Xfinity’s internet. The internet package costs us $70 a month and and we will either pay $10 for every 50 GB over the 1 TB. Or, for $50 we can get true unlimited.

So right now, we have a $70 internet bill and $129 TV bill. If I ditch Xfinity TV, I get rid of the $129 bill, but I’d likely need to add a $50 add on for unlimited data and the $55 for Hulu Live TV. So I’m really only reducing things by $24 a month and potentially adding frustration. I could just simply add Hulu’s service, which would increase our overall costs by the $105, but I could cut the larger sports fee I already pay Comcast, which is $9.95. I also pay $10 for HD, which I can just get through Hulu. We can reduce to a smaller TV package, possible saving some more sheckles.

Regardless, it either becomes expensive or confusing. You never want consumers to become confused as they also become unpredictable.

While I understand I’m somewhat lucky. I can make those decisions and find a way to watch the Cubs. There are so many other Cubs fans that I’ve talked to or have read comments of saying they have no choice. I can’t often put myself into that situation, but I do feel for them. Maybe they have limited incomes or can’t add a dish to their apartment, or dont have reliable internet. Whatever the case, it sucks and I hope theres a solution for you too. And soon.

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