Boston Red Sox Cable Network Home Becomes First Regional Sports Outlet To Offer Streaming Access Without Pay-TV Subscription

NESN, the longtime cable TV house of Main League Baseball’s Boston Pink Sox and the Nationwide Hockey League’s Boston Bruins, has turn into the primary regional sports activities community to supply viewers streaming entry to reside video games with no pay-TV subscription.

The brand new outlet, referred to as NESN 360, prices $30 a month and is barely accessible in New England. Whereas that price ticket redefines the higher restrict of streaming, viewers of RSNs are loyal and infrequently prepared to pay hefty surcharges by means of their cable packages, significantly for baseball. Quite a lot of different RSN gamers, together with Sinclair Broadcast Group and NBCUniversal, are getting set to roll out direct-to-consumer streaming choices, citing the necessity to reply to cord-cutting, which is trimming about 5 million U.S. pay-TV properties a yr.

The economics of RSNs, which had been a profit-making machine engineered duing cable’s heyday within the late-Nineteen Nineties and 2000s, are altering dramatically, however Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley and different stakeholders have insisted there’s a massive marketplace for die-hard sports activities followers. Some streaming rights have been snarled with leagues, particularly MLB, amid the bigger migration of linear viewing to streaming. In NESN’s case, the community is owned by the mother or father of the Pink Sox, giving it higher leverage in rights negotiations.

Subscribers can stream NESN’s reside feeds, together with video games, in addition to accessing on-demand programming through Roku in addition to computer systems, iOS, Android or Apple TV.

“NESN 360 is the newest iteration in NESN’s lengthy historical past of innovation and offering followers with the perfect sports activities viewing expertise,” NESN CEO Sean McGrail stated. “We consider the direct subscription possibility will construct on NESN’s attain within the area, and might be a superb complement to the present, useful partnerships we’ve with TV suppliers to deliver NESN to all properties in New England.”