Universal Sports Says Distribution Deal Is Near

Network Committed to Gaining Carriage Agreements: Sternberg

By Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 1/9/2012 12:01:00 AM

Universal Sports Network, having already signed affiliate pacts with a half-dozen smaller providers, is nearing a deal with a top distributor.

Universal Sports CEO David Sternberg said the Olympics-style sports proponent has been working diligently to close carriage pacts with distributors throughout the multichannel universe and expects to announce a pact, perhaps as early as this week.

The network, which inked its first licensefee deal with satellite-TV provider DirecTV last summer, had been carried as a multicast service in many of the top DMAs. However, Universal Sports announced last summer that it would move to become a traditional cable channel upon the expiration of the multicast contracts with the broadcasters on Dec. 31, 2011.

Sternberg said the network recently reached carriage agreements with Alaskan cable operator GCI, Hiawatha Broadband Communications in Minnesota, Cascade Communications in Oregon, Waitsfield Cable in Vermont, MTC Cable in New York and Internet-protocol TV distributor SkyAngel. He said the service previously had been offered through some of those providers on a multicast basis.

Through the multicast arrangements and the DirecTV deal, Universal Sports was in front of some 63 million homes in 52 markets last year. However, since the network was retransmitted on digital cable in only a select number of the markets — and lacked such rights in many others — it only counted 30 million actual cable subscribers, plus another 6 million over-the-air only households.

Asked about the expectation that Universal Sports would lose a significant number of homes during this transition per iod, Sternberg replied: “We acknowledged that six months ago. It was a turning point, the decision that we would no longer give the service away, and that we needed our distribution partners to step up and start paying license fees. We had hoped to have a few more large deals in place by now, but our timing was challenging.”

Sternberg pointed to many distributors facing retransmission-consent deals and other business issues at the end of 2011, but he remains hopeful that those executives will now have the “bandwidth, figuratively speaking,” to address Universal Sports. “We are still very committed to our position and confident that we’ll get deals done.”

To that end, Universal Sports could announce a carriage pact with a major distributor as early as this week. Sternberg also said the network was “pretty far along” with two or three others, and “we could get to the finish by the end of the month.”