Hulu + Live TV will no longer have RSNs

Let's all keep in mind that Dish dropped those RSNs while they were still owned by Disney. (They were about to be sold to Sinclair at the time, though.)

 

The thing here is Disney has already bundled ESPN's channels with ABC O&Os, Disney, Disney Jr., Disney XD and Freeform. Anytime a distributor has pushed back the high prices Disney asks for this group of channels people on the affected pay-TV platform goes nuts. If a pay-TV provider wants to take a stand against ESPN's prices they would have to be OK with also losing those non-sports channels and the churn associated with it. Also Disney now has their own vMVPD in Hulu + Live TV so an existing pay-TV provider doesn't want to give their customers a reason to switch to Disney's own service.

Since Disney was legally required to divest the Fox Sports RSNs there was no way Disney could bundle them with any of the networks they had/kept at the time. They had to reach deals only for the Fox Sports/YES RSNs. That was Dish's golden opportunity to take a stand against their high price as it was the first time the Fox Sports RSNs were unbundled from FX, FXX, FXM, National Geographic, Nat Geo Wild, Fox O&Os, MyNetworkTV O&Os, Fox Sports 1 & 2, etc.

AT&T and Comcast don't bundle their RSNs with their more valuable networks from WarnerMedia & NBCUniversal respectively. This is how fuboTV can carry AT&T SportsNet Southwest & Pittsburgh without the other WarnerMedia channels. Dish was able to drop NBC Sports Chicago without it affecting their existing agreement for NBC O&Os, USA, Syfy, E!, Bravo, etc.

Sinclair's plan to bundle the Fox Sports/Marquee/YES RSNs in with their O&O locals and Tennis Channel agreement isn't going very well. For providers like Dish, Hulu + Live TV & YouTube TV they didn't have to take this deal since their existing Sinclair O&O/Tennis Channel agreements are still valid. Sinclair most likely didn't bet on the mid-tier MVPD/vMVPDs dropping the RSNs in this manner.

 

Also in more RSN news YouTube TV is dropping NESN on October 31.

 

The interesting thing about Tennis Channel is that Sinclair somehow did manage to get Dish to bundle that into Welcome Pack. My sister is now getting Tennis Channel with her Welcome Pack subscription, and some other Welcome Pack subscribers over at satelliteguys have also reported getting Tennis Channel. This is a recent change that just happened this month.

 

No matter what I don’t see anyone renewing rsn till nba and hockey start back up, and even then a lot may wait till baseball all starts to have a bunch of stuff on the channels. This will them save some money while there is nothing on.

 

I had Hulu for the months that there was baseball this year, when baseball starts in the spring I will have to decide what to do with Dish (been thinking of cancelling since the RSN dispute). To get the RSN I will have to subscribe to my local cable company that now has different packages you can subscribe to, each package has a few of the channels mostly owned by the same company, or for a specific group (Kids, Home Improvement, Crime, Movies, etc.). The only problem with them is they offer FSN but it costs 10.99/month.