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The Marquee Sports Network is set to launch in February as the exclusive local television home of the Cubs, adding year-round, 24/7 programming to sate even the most diehard fans, and an increased charge on the cable bill to infuriate those who are not.
A partnership between the Cubs and Sinclair Broadcast Group, Marquee is already pitching cable and satellite providers to insert the new regional sports network into the channel lineup. That could automatically add $4 to the nearly $9 monthly regional sports fee paid by Chicago-area subscribers, sources close to the team said.
“They’ll not only pay more if they want to watch it, but they’ll pay more if they don’t want to watch it,” said media analyst Bruce Leichtman, president of Leichtman Research.
Years in the works, the new Cubs network will include 150 regular and about 30 spring training games, expanded pregame and postgame coverage, classic broadcasts from the archives and other programming.
A dozen Cubs regular season games are reserved for national broadcasts, but Marquee will be the only way to watch games on local TV next season after the team parts ways with NBC Sports Chicago, the regional sports network it formed in 2004 with the Bulls, Blackhawks and White Sox.
The Cubs also are exiting local over-the-air TV after 71 years, pulling the plug on WGN-Ch.9 and WLS-Ch.7 and moving 70 games between them over to Marquee next season.
Marquee and NBC Sports Chicago are already battling it out for a share of carriage fees — the amount cable and satellite providers pay for the programming — which ends up as a line item on most cable bills.
The Cubs believe Marquee should cost subscribers more next season than NBC Sports Chicago, sources said.
The argument? Since ending a centurylong drought with their 2016 World Series win, the Cubs have been getting better TV ratings than the other three teams combined.
In addition, the Cubs are hoping to get more pay TV providers from Iowa to Indiana — Major League Baseball's designated home broadcast territory for the team — to carry the new network.
Cubs spokesman Julian Green declined to comment.
While NBC Sports Chicago will defend its pay TV turf with the remaining three teams and nearly twice as many games as Marquee, analysts expect the network’s carriage fees to decline next year without the Cubs.
A spokesman for NBC Sports Chicago declined to comment for this story.
Marquee is expected to net the Cubs about $90 million in annual broadcast rights fees as part of a multiyear deal, a significant boost from the $60 million the team currently earns, according to a source close to the team.
The advent of a new cable network — especially a high-priced regional sports network — is something of an anomaly in the age of cord-cutting, streaming and skinny bundles, where cable providers and subscribers are both looking to trim costs.
Cord-cutting is accelerating, with nearly 2.9 million net subscriber losses for the pay TV industry last year, and another 1.3 million in the first quarter of 2019 alone, Leichtman said.
But live sports is the most valuable programming on pay TV and perhaps the last line of defense against cord cutting.
“It’s one of the reasons people hold on to their pay TV subscriptions, because you can’t get — especially the regional sports – you can’t get them anywhere else,” Leichtman said.
If all goes as planned, Marquee will be packaged in most cable bundles, alongside rival NBC Sports Chicago. Comcast, for example, includes NBC Sports Chicago in its Xfinity Extra and Xfinity Preferred TV bundles, and offers it as an add-on for its Basic customers.
Subscribers in Chicago and the suburbs now pay close to $9 a month for the four-team NBC Sports Chicago. The average rate drops to $5.71 when far-flung markets like Des Moines and Indianapolis are included, according to media research group Kagan.
“These costs include the fees that regional sports networks charge us to carry them on our cable systems and are among the fastest growing components of our programming costs,” Comcast spokesman Jack Segal said in an email. “We itemize it on customers’ bills to be transparent and ensure they’re aware of what they’re paying for.”
A source close to the Cubs projects the regional sports fee will climb to $12 or $13 per month in the Chicago area after Marquee goes live in February, with the Cubs-Sinclair network getting $6 or $7 of that total.
Segal said there was “nothing to report” regarding negotiations to carry Marquee.
The projected fee increase also reflects the migration of 170 games between the four teams from WGN-Ch. 9 and WLS-Ch. 7 to the two regional sports networks next year. While those games were indeed free to viewers who watched the over-the-air broadcasts using antennas, pay TV subscribers subsidize local broadcast stations, which receive retransmission fees from cable and satellite providers.
Both costs show up on monthly cable bills. A recent suburban Chicago Comcast bill, for example, included a $10 broadcast TV fee and an $8.25 regional sports fee.
Marc Ganis, a Chicago-based sports marketing consultant, said the loss of the Cubs should reduce the fees NBC Sports Chicago and the two TV stations charge cable providers for their programming.
But in the real world, any decline probably won’t offset new carriage fees associated with Marquee.
“NBC Sports Chicago, which is going to have maybe half of the audience it had, isn’t going to want to go backwards and WGN, which is basically getting gutted, is going to fight like heck to keep any retransmission fee of significance,” Ganis said.
Adding to the likely increase in cable bills, both Chicago regional sports networks have significant ownership muscle to negotiate higher carriage fees with pay TV providers.
Sinclair, the nation’s largest TV station owner, became a major player in sports broadcasting earlier this month after agreeing to buy 21 Fox regional sports networks from Disney for $10.6 billion, pending approval from federal regulators.
“There’s a lot more leverage in favor of Sinclair because of the Fox RSNs,” said Adam Gajo, a sports analyst for Kagan.
Meanwhile, Comcast-owned NBC Sports has eight regional sports networks, including New York, California, Boston and Philadelphia.
Just because the rival Chicago sports networks can charge more next year, doesn’t mean they should, Gajo said, pointing to the distribution disaster that is SportsNet LA, cable home of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Launched in 2014 with Time Warner Cable, SportsNet LA has paid off big for the team, earning a reported $8.35 billion over 25 years. But it remains unavailable in most Los Angeles homes after cable and satellite providers balked over higher carriage fees. Charter Communications bought Time Warner Cable in 2016.
“The best way to start these RSNs is to come in a little bit under, get people used to seeing the Cubs games on Marquee and you build the license fee up from there,” Gajo said.
Twitter @RobertChannick