Trail Blazers Tap Sinclair/KATU as New Local TV Partner, Also Launching BlazerVision Streaming Service

After moving on from ROOT Sports, Blazers games will now be broadcast over the air as well as direct-to-consumer.

Last month, the first domino fell in the Trail Blazers’ evolving local-broadcast plans, with the team announcing that they were parting ways with their highly unpopular regional sports network partner, ROOT Sports Northwest, after three seasons. The plan has been to put their games over the air locally, along with introducing a direct-to-consumer streaming option.

Now, we know which TV channel will be showing their games going forward: KATU, the Sinclair-owned ABC affiliate in the Portland metro area as well as their alternate channel, KUNP. Games will also air across the state of Oregon on the Sinclair-owned stations in Eugene (KVAL) and Medford (KTVL) and in Washington on KUNS (Seattle) and KEPR (Yakima), under the banner of “Rip City Television Network.” The news was first reported by friend of the program Danny Marang of 1080 The Fan and Jacked Ramsays.

The Blazers are also launching a direct-to-consumer streaming service called BlazerVision (a nod to their pay-per-view cable channel from the 1990s) that will carry their games within the broadcast territory.

For $120 per season or $19.99 per month, fans in Oregon and Washington can get access to all of the Blazers’ locally broadcast games (this year, their only nationally televised game is Damian Lillard’s return to Portland with the Bucks, which will air on TNT on Jan. 28) on a variety of streaming devices through NBA.com and the NBA’s official app. An annual subscription also includes a pair of upper-bowl tickets to a regular-season game, and full- and half-season ticket holders get complimentary access to BlazerVision as part of their benefits. Fans outside of the Blazers’ broadcast territory can stream games with an NBA League Pass subscription.

The organization’s goal in ditching ROOT Sports to go over the air is to make their games available to as many people as possible, prioritizing wider accessibility over the higher upfront rights fees offered by an RSN partner.

“We’ve been caught in the middle of so many distribution challenges for the last two decades that we really wanted to remove as much of that friction as possible,” Blazers president of business operations Dewayne Hankins said in an interview on Monday. “We really believe this is the best way to make lifelong fans—for [people] to be able to watch the games and fall in love with the players.”

Their shift to an over-the-air broadcast model comes as the live-sports broadcasting business is changing radically, especially at the local level. Several other NBA teams, including the Phoenix Suns and New Orleans Pelicans, have moved their games to over-the-air networks in their local markets; the Suns saw their local TV ratings last year nearly double over the previous season as a result. Diamond Sports Group, which owns the Bally Sports family of RSNs that broadcast a number of NBA teams, has been in bankruptcy proceedings for over a year, and Warner Brothers Discovery divested completely from their RSN holdings, including ROOT Sports.

The Blazers had one year remaining on their deal with ROOT, which began with the 2021-22 season. But a drastic drop in ratings last season, spurred by Comcast’s last-minute move of the channel to only their highest-priced cable package days before the season began, was one of the factors that led the team to seek an early exit. Their hope is that the move to network TV, along with the new streaming package, will create more local interest in the team simply by way of fans being able to see their games more easily.

The decision to move away from cable to a combination of network television and streaming also dovetails with the NBA’s new national broadcasting agreement, which goes into effect after this coming season. In addition to the incumbent ESPN, the league is introducing two new broadcast partners—Amazon, an entirely over-the-top streaming platform, and NBC, which will utilize both their over-the-air network TV channel and their streaming app, Peacock. Across the industry, leagues and teams are switching to direct-to-consumer and over-the-air broadcast models, and the Blazers are keeping pace with that trend.

The on-air product, which is owned and produced by the team, will not change with the move of TV partners, with play-by-play announcer Kevin Calabro, color analyst Lamar Hurd and sideline reporter Brooke Olzendam still in place. There are plans underway for more Blazers-related programming, both on TV and within BlazerVision, in addition to broadcasting the games.

“This is already an Emmy-winning broadcast,” KATU general manager Dean Ditmer said Monday. “We’re thrilled to be the home of that and the platform for that, but we also intend to expand on the broadcast content as well and do more things across KATU to support the relationship.”

The Blazers kick off their preseason with a game against the L.A. Clippers in Seattle on Oct. 11. Their regular-season opener is at home on Oct. 23 against Golden State.