With AT&T SportsNet in peril, watching Rockies games on TV might be different

Spring training began for the Rockies on Saturday with a 12-5 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks. But a looming issue off the field hovered over the purple-and-black as their 2023 journey began.

Simply put, how fans watch the Rockies on TV could be about to change.

AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain hasn’t had the same issues regarding local carriage that Altitude Sports has. But now, its operators appear to be pulling the plug.

According to reports from Sports Business Journal and The Wall Street Journal, Warner Brothers Discovery — which operates AT&T SportsNets in the Denver, Pittsburgh and Houston markets — will file for Chapter 7 liquidation if it can’t reach deals with the teams it carries in those markets to take back the broadcast rights.

Warner Brothers Discovery “has been trying to get out of the RSN business for a while,” Sports Business Journal reported.

The company told the teams with which it has contracts — including the Rockies — that they have until March 31 to reach an agreement to take their rights back. If deals can’t be reached, those channels eventually plan to move forward with the afore-mentioned Chapter 7 liquidation filing.

There are possibilities. Another broadcast consortium could buy the networks. Or, the teams themselves could push into the broadcast world — although the struggles of Altitude to gain carriage over Comcast and Dish Network provide provide a warning against that, at least in the Denver market.

Among pro teams, AT&T SportsNet has only the Rockies here. But it airs Jazz NBA games in Utah and Vegas Golden Knights NHL contests in Nevada and wide swaths of the West.

But in the Centennial State, the network might as well be RockiesVision for six months a year. It has long featured a robust offering of Rockies-related programming. And despite the team’s struggles, that usually has been quite the viable business — although ratings did plummet in 2021, per Forbes.

This news comes on the heels of Diamond Sports reportedly nearing a bankruptcy filing.

A subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group, Diamond is the umbrella company of the Bally Sports Networks, a regional-sports consortium that covers wide swaths of the country.

Diamond missed a $140 million interest payment earlier this month, per multiple reports. Diamond said in a statement that its “business will continue as usual, and it will keep broadcasting quality live sports productions for fans while it addresses its balance sheet.”

But one day later, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred declared at a press conference that if Diamond/Bally/Sinclair missed any of its rights-fee payments to teams, “That creates a termination right, and our clubs will proceed to terminate those contracts.”

Fourteen MLB teams have contracts with Diamond/Bally/Sinclair. If the teams exercise their right to terminate deals for non-payment, Manfred said MLB would produce the game broadcasts itself and make deals to have the games air locally.

Manfred also suggested that local games could be available digitally on MLB.TV. This has long been an issue. The MLB.TV package — which debuted in 2002 — does not show Rockies games in the team’s territorial footprint. That massive swath of land includes Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah, western Nebraska, western South Dakota and eastern Idaho.

Thus, fans needed AT&T SportsNet or its predecessors — Root Sports, Fox Sports Rocky Mountain or 1993-2002 broadcast partner KWGN-Ch. 2 or 2003-08 partner KTVD-Ch. 20 — to watch the Rockies.

Manfred would try to change that if the contracts get blown up.

“We would also be seeking flexibility on the digital side, so that when you look at MLB.tv, you’d go in, you can buy your out-of-market package like you’ve always had, but you would have the option to buy up into in-market games, which I see as a huge improvement for fans,” Manfred said at a Feb. 16 press conference.

Would 150 Rockies games be available on over-the-air or cable TV? That’s unknown. MLB has dipped its toes into streaming-only packages; this year, Peacock and Apple TV will again have slates of games exclusive to their services. It’s not to the extreme of Major League Soccer going all-in with Apple TV, but it’s another sign of how delivery of sports continues to change — perhaps by the week.

The games will be broadcast, somehow, someway. But never in recent MLB history have there been so many questions as to where and how the games will air.

One would usually close this type of estory by saying, “Stay tuned.” The problem is, it’s hard to figure out which channel — or delivery method — will be in play.

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