The TV home for Lightning and Rays games is getting a new name along with the logo, but don’t anticipate the wrangling that is keeping several Lightning fans from watching games on the channel to change.
Logos were released Wednesday for the rebranding of Fox Sports Sun as Bally Sports Sun, a move that would become official in a few months. The Bally casino brand in November accomplished a 10-year naming-rights contract with Sinclair Broadcast Group, which bought the Fox Sports local network from Disney in 2019.
Combined with Bally, Sinclair Broadcast Grouphopes to add an interactive gambling component to all its sports broadcast. Bally president and CEO George Papanier said in a declaration Wednesday that the company plans to add the everyday fantasy sports platform it obtained from fantasy operator Monkey Knife Fight across the networks’ live game-day coverage.
All that is less significant to Lightning and Ray’s fans who can no longer watch locally broadcast games.
Frontier Communications dropped Sinclair-owned Fox Sports Sun as well as Fox Sports Florida from its cable packages in September, and numerous streaming platforms no longer have the Sinclair-possessed regional networks in their channel lineups owing to wrangling over carriage fees, what cable plus streaming companies pay network proprietors to carry their networks.
The cost is typically passed along to cable plus streaming subscribers.
Hulu stopped carrying Fox Sports Sun plus Fox Sports Florida on Oct. 1, YouTube TV on Oct. 22.
The primary substitute options locally are subscribing to Spectrum cable, DirecTV satellite service otherwise AT&T TV streaming.
The TV rights holder for local Lightning and Ray’s broadcasts has been rebranded to Bally Sports Sun from Fox Sports Sun.
Sinclair Broadcast Group said Wednesday it had no update to share.
Sinclair’s partnership with Bally might eventually lead to the development of an app wherever fans can buy games direct-to-consumer for streaming, much similar to Netflix or Disney+.
