Fox Sports Networks
For years, the default RSN for many markets was owned by Fox Sports, but an increasing trend is for the teams whose games make up the lucrative programming to own the RSN themselves. This serves two purposes: First, the teams make more money operating an RSN than they would collecting a licensing fee from, for example, Fox Sports Net.
Second, by owning their own RSN, teams that must share revenues with other members of their league can mask its broadcast-related profits. Under the old model, a team collects a large fee for licensing its games to the RSN. That fee would then be disclosed and shared with the other teams in the league. Under the new, team-owned RSN model, the team demands only a nominal fee, so the profits for local broadcasting stay with the team. The name of the networks was shortened to Fox Sports (Region/City) with the start of the 2008 college football season as part of a rebranding effort. The Pittsburgh, Rocky Mountain, Utah and Northwest affiliates, owned by DirecTV Sports Networks, were rebranded as Root Sports on April 1, 2011. They still carry the same local teams and national FSN programs.
Read more about this topic: Regional Sports Network
Famous quotes containing the words fox, sports and/or networks:
“The lily in splendor, the vine in her grace,
The fox in the forest, all had their desire,
As then I had mine, in the place that was happy and poor.”
—Ruth Pitter (b. 1897)
“In the end, I think you really only get as far as you’re allowed to get.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 87 (June 17, 1991)
“The great networks are there to prove that ideas can be canned like spaghetti. If everything ends up by tasting like everything else, is that not the evidence that it has been properly cooked?”
—Frederic Raphael (b. 1931)