Blazers leaving local RSN highlights growing trend among NBA teams

The Portland Trail Blazers are the latest NBA team to get off its regional sports network. The team said Wednesday that it is leaving ROOT Sports, the cable network that had been its broadcast home since 2021. The Blazers’ contract with ROOT was supposed to last one more season, according to a source briefed on the contract details.

“Trail Blazers basketball will no longer air on ROOT Sports, but we thank ROOT Sports for years of great partnership,” the team said in a statement. “An exciting announcement on the future television home of Blazers basketball will be made soon.”

While the Trail Blazers’ next local television partner is not yet known, their decision to walk away from ROOT continues an emerging trend across the league. NBA teams have slowly started to walk away from cable TV amid the uncertainty of regional sports networks in recent years, and Portland is just the latest market.

The Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz were the first to do so. They left their local RSNs for over-the-air channels and launched a direct-to-consumer streaming option, hoping to hit fans on free TV and with a digital subscription for younger, mobile audiences.

The New Orleans Pelicans will also dump their RSN this upcoming season for an over-the-air option, according to NOLA.com.

The Pelicans, like the Suns, left a Bally Sports network. Those networks are owned by Diamond Sports Group, which declared bankruptcy in March 2023 and has been in bankruptcy court ever since. The NBA had prepared itself to step in last season if the Bally Sports networks could not air its teams’ games.

The future of Diamond Sports remains unclear, and the now-14 NBA teams that have contracts with them are entering this upcoming season unsure of where their games might air. Diamond had originally been at risk of sunsetting after the conclusion of the 2024 baseball season, but then struck a deal with Amazon to arrange a $450 million plan with creditors to keep operating beyond the last NBA season. That deal, however, has not yet been approved by the bankruptcy judge overseeing Diamond’s case.

The NBA had worked out a deal with Diamond Sports that would have given back the league and the 15 teams that were on Bally Sports networks control of their broadcast and digital rights this offseason. That agreement is now also up in the air until the future of Diamond Sports, and its deal with Amazon, is clarified.

The amended agreement with Diamond had also allowed the NBA teams to air 10 games over the air last season. The Pelicans were one of the teams that availed themselves of that option.

The move away from cable to over-the-air TV has benefits and risks for the teams that choose to do so. RSNs, while unstable, still offer premium local media rights fees, often because of contracts signed earlier this decade or during the 2010s. Broadcasts on free television offer teams larger audiences and visibility, but often smaller guaranteed rights fees.

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