ORLANDO, Fla., May 8 — FreeCast is launching a new initiative with the potential to transform how consumers access sports in the streaming era: Regional Streaming Sports Channels (RSSCs). As sports, like the rest of the streaming ecosystem, become fragmented across dozens of different providers, a unified sports streaming solution is becoming an economic necessity for the nation’s major league sports.
FreeCast is now making an appeal to the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, and National Hockey League in particular, as each of these sports are most impacted by the ongoing collapse of Regional Sports Networks (RSNs). This also presents a first-of-its-kind opportunity for minor and semi-pro sports leagues and collegiate sports that don’t currently enjoy streaming or television deals.
RSSC’s will be powered by FreeCast’s Broadcast Enable Streaming Television (BEST) technology, allowing the delivery of games and other programming directly to local markets, across different devices, via over-the-air broadcast and geo-fenced streaming.
As RSN bankruptcies leave a number of teams across different sports leagues scrambling for new distribution options, FreeCast’s RSSCs offer a turn-key alternative without complex rights negotiations or building costly infrastructure. Teams will be able to:
- Launch their own branded regional channels instantly.
- Reach fans via both over-the-air broadcast and streaming apps simultaneously.
- Retain control of content and distribution with multiple monetization options.
In addition to simplifying distribution and fans’ access to games, each RSSC channel can function as a fully integrated T-commerce hub, supporting advanced ad tech and sponsorships, e-commerce and merchandising, fan communities, and first-party data ownership. This creates multiple reliable revenue streams for teams, unlike massive sports streaming rights deals which often strain the financial stability of the very distributors that they create a dependence on.
FreeCast CEO William Mobley described the impetus for a new sports streaming model: “Streaming services are spending big on sports because it’s basically an arms race right now. If you do the math on these multi-billion-dollar deals, there’s almost no way the big SVOD players make money. Long term, that’s not sustainable, and that’s going to become a big problem for everyone: SVOD services that now have those costs on their balance sheets, subscribers who are going to face higher fees, and eventually the sports leagues who aren’t going to keep getting that blank check when the economics don’t work for everyone else. We’re offering a solution that gives leagues and teams multi-channel distribution and innovative monetization options. That way they can control their revenue streams and ensure their fans have access.”
With the fundamental economics of sports changing, FreeCast offers teams a key advantage over traditional streaming rights deals.
