Chicago sports fans don’t have to pay a cable company to watch Connor Bedard anymore, and there will be no charge to see the Bulls or White Sox on TV, either.
The Chicago Sports Network (CHSN) reached an agreement to broadcast live games over the free airwaves through WJYS (Channel 62) in Chicago, which is independently owned by Millennial Communications. It will also broadcast games on Gray Television’s CBS affiliate WSLN (Ch. 23) in Rockford and NBC affiliate WNDU (Ch. 16) in South Bend, Ind.
The new agreement comes three months after the network was formed to distribute Blackhawks, Bulls and White Sox games when those teams chose not to renew their deals with regional carrier NBC Sports Chicago. CHSN is a joint venture between the three teams and Standard Media, a privately held company in Nashville that owns local television stations in Rhode Island, Nebraska, Missouri and Kentucky.
CHSN will officially go live on Oct. 1—one week before most of the NHL, including the Blackhawks, begins the regular season and three weeks before the start of the NBA season. The White Sox, currently playing out the string of a historically awful 2024 campaign, will join CHSN in 2025.
With just a few weeks before launch, however, CHSN still hasn’t signed a carriage deal—although it’s reportedly in talks with DirecTV—which is why it’s going after the roughly 600,000 households that do not subscribe to any cable/pay-TV service. Those customers will need a digital antenna to pick up the signals.
The broadcast alignment is the latest in U.S. pro sports, as more teams abandon the regional sports network model with cable and satellite subscriptions continuing their steep declines. A huge chunk of the RSN collapse comes from the ongoing Diamond Sports Group bankruptcy proceedings, with multiple NHL and NBA teams moving toward a combination of free TV and streaming services available to local customers. Warner Bros. Discovery’s exit from the RSN business also accelerated the trend.
Despite the collective poor performances of the three teams in recent years, the arrangement matters because Chicago represents the country’s third-largest media market, with 3.7 million television households, according to Nielsen.
In March, The Athletic reported that the Blackhawks were considering building their own regional channel similar to what the Chicago Cubs did with the launch of Marquee Sports Network in 2020. However, the team, owned by the Wirtz family, chose to maintain its longstanding link with Jerry Reinsdorf’s Bulls and White Sox. Both families also own the United Center, where the ‘Hawks and Bulls play.
With assistance from Anthony Crupi.
