Marquee Sports Network reaches deal with Hulu
With the launch of Marquee Sports Network a mere days away, the Cubs President of Business Operations, Crane Kenney, announced today that the Marquee Sports Network has reached a carriage deal with Hulu. This will allow Marquee Sports to be a part of Hulu’s Live TV package, offering an alternative for those that want to save money or who currently have a cable provider that hasn’t reached a deal with Marquee. Negotiations are ongoing with other live streaming TV services and deals are expected. The other most notable one is YouTube TV. It’s widely expected that a deal will be reach with YouTube TV as well.
Of course, there is some other live TV streaming services too like FuboTV and Sling TV but those present a little more of a challenge. SlingTV is owned by Dish, and Dish dropped pretty all regional sports networks last year. Both Dish and Sling dropped NBC Sports Chicago, and it appears Dish has no interest in Marquee either.
Fubo is a bit more interesting of a case. It does currently carry NBC Sports Chicago, however, it did drop all of the Fox regional sports networks, which are now owned by Sinclair, the same company behind Marquee. So it will remain to be seen if a deal will be reached.
Of course, because Marquee has reached a carriage agreement with ATT/DirectTV, Marquee will be available on ATT’s ATT TV Now streaming platform as well.
This now makes 30 television providers that have signed on to Marquee Sports, with Comcast being the most notable omission. The Cubs are still confident that a deal will be reached with Comcast, but it’s not expected before the start of the first spring game on Saturday afternoon.
Now, a lot of questions surrounded the blackout restrictions regarding Marquee Sports so here are some of the answers.
Marquee Sports Networks is a regional sports network. Therefore, it is only available in the market that serves the Chicago area. This is currently most of Illionois, Indiana, Iowa and small part of southern Wisconsin. Basically, if you’ve been able to get Cubs games before via NBC Sports Chicago, you will continue to get them via Marquee Sports Network, no matter how you subscriber to Marquee.
MLB.TV is the only provider for out of market games. So if you previously had to use MLB.TV to see Cubs games, you will have to continue to do so. MLB.TV will use the Marquee Sports Network feed, so you will still get the local broadcast.
There is talks of Marquee Sports being available of a nationwide basis but with the live games blacked out. This means you will still get all the other content that Marquee Sports provides (like the Off the Mound series with Ryan Dempster), but not the live games. There is no word yet on whether is happening right away, or is something for down the road.
It also appears that Marquee Sports Network will have an app for you to stream the games, but again, you can only stream if you log-in with an authenticated cable provider. This means you can download the app to smart TV, Amazon Fire Stick, Roku, phone and etc. log in with your cable credentials, and stream the game. There is no stand-alone pay option to stream the games. You can also stream Marquee through the watchmarquee.com website and by logging in with a cable provider.
*Note-The Cubs have not publicly stated which platforms will have the app available to download or when the app will be available, but they did send out a tweet during the convention saying there will be an app. The above paragraph was meant as an example of how the app would work.*
