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SALT LAKE CITY — Ryan Smith has a goal for the Utah Jazz's next broadcast deal: give everyone access.
"If you've got rabbit ears on your television, you're going to be able to watch the games," the Utah Jazz owner told Sportsnet Canada last week.
Such a thought hearkens back to the days before Utah's AT&T Sports contact when the Utah Jazz games were broadcast on network television. The AT&T deal — originally worth 12-year, $240 million — ended this season.
It was quite lucrative for the Jazz, but drew consistent ire from the fanbase looking for more affordable and more convenient options to watch their favorite team.
Streaming options were extremely limited (and mostly non-existent until a couple seasons ago) and fans were forced to pay for cable or satellite packages they otherwise could have gone without.
It's the same dilemma facing many franchises across the sporting landscape.Can you give fans full access to watch their teams and also continue to get tens of millions from it? Or do you just take the hit?
Smith apparently is fine with the latter.
"We'll figure out how to offset the revenue contract for that another way, but our players and coaches ... they're working way too hard to not have their games be viewed by the masses," he said.
There's still no official word on when the Jazz will announce a new deal, but Smith's comments are in line with a recent trend of teams moving away from the failing Regional Sports Network model back to network television.
The Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury announced in April they would broadcast future games for free through a partnership with Gray Television Inc. and video technology startup Kiswe. However, a U.S. bankruptcy judge blocked the deal in May, saying the team violated the rights of its current broadcast partner, the bankrupt Diamond Sports Group.
The NHL's Vegas Golden Knights recently agreed to a deal with Scripps Sports to show all locally broadcast games for free in Nevada and four surrounding states.
So the precedent has been set to abandon the regional sports network model. The Jazz seem poised to follow suit.
"Right now we're producing Jazz games to 40% of our market. I stood up publicly and said that's not gonna fly this next year. We're going wall to wall in the state, 3 million people. Everyone's going to have access," Smith said.
But why was Smith talking about this to a Canadian network that's mostly concerned about hockey? Because Smith seems pretty dead set on getting an NHL team in Utah.
"We think the market's gonna be as receptive as what you've seen in Seattle or Las Vegas. And we also think we can be phenomenal partners with the NHL," he said.
Due to the success of those franchises, Smith hinted that expansion would be his preferred route to bring a team to Utah. Though, he made it clear, he's a "willing partner" if relocation was on the table.
"It's hard to not look at Seattle in Vegas and go, what an incredible job the league's done on expansion. … I mean, holy cow, like that's the playbook to how to do it."
And he's hopeful he'll be able to get to follow it.
