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SALT LAKE CITY — It's been said that nostalgia is a heckuva drug. What about free live sporting events? Utah Jazz fans will get a dose of both next season.
The Utah Jazz announced Tuesday that KJZZ-TV (channel 14) will once again be the team's television home. The over-the-air local station (fans will need nothing more than a digital antenna and a TV to access games) will broadcast all non-nationally televised Jazz games beginning in October.
That means this fall fans will tune in to KJZZ to watch their team play at the Delta Center. Talk about a blast from the past.
"When we first took over stewardship of the team, 39% of Utah households had the ability to watch Jazz games, so as soon as the window opened last fall for us to rethink our approach to broadcasting, we began exploring all options to provide fans the most reliable access to Jazz games," team owner Ryan Smith said in a statement.
Sinclair Broadcast Group owns KJZZ, and the broadcast rights deal also allows Sinclair's Salt Lake City CBS affiliate, KUTV (channel 2), the option to broadcast games of its choice. The length of contract was not announced.
"It's not a super long-term deal, but with the flexibility," Smith said Tuesday. "It's much more of a partnership than a deal. We're partners, and I think that's important with KJZZ. If we're good partners, it will keep going; if we're not, then it won't."
Fans will get a taste of the new landscape in July when the Jazz's Salt Lake City Summer League games will be shown on the network.
Along with the team returning to a free, over-the-air provider, Smith Entertainment Group — the parent company of the Utah Jazz — announced it will begin SEG Media, a new production company that will produce games and content for a subscription-based streaming service through UtahJazz.com.
The direct-to-consumer service will stream games as well as give fans "unprecedented access to the team, front office, and corporate management via exclusive behind-the-scenes footage" for a fee. The team-owned service will give fans outside of the Utah market (or away from a television) an option to still view live games.
A price point has not been announced for the service, but a team source said it will be fair and competitive.
"We don't know that yet," Smith said on Tuesday. "That's something that we are looking at; there's a lot that goes into that, certainly around the long-term direction of the NBA."
The long-term direction of NBA team's broadcasting rights is currently in disarray. The Regional Sports Network model that most of the league relied on over the last decade-plus has completely failed. Dish pulled all RSNs two seasons ago, and Diamond Sports Group's Bally Sports Networks, which aired 42 different pro teams, went bankrupt.
Locally, AT&T SportsNet's parent station, Warner Brothers' Discovery, pulled out of the business earlier this year, officially ending Utah's long-time partnership with the network. The Jazz signed a deal with what-was-then FoxSportsNet Utah back in 2009. That deal that brought in $20 million per season, but left many fans on the outside — especially lately.
The result to all this change? No one was bringing the type of contract that the Jazz signed back in 2009 to the table, so the organization went another route.
"This new approach is one of the most important investments we have made since purchasing the team, because it allows us to deliver Utah Jazz games to all 3.3 million-plus Utahns," Smith said.
And that should be welcome news for fans who have struggled to watch their team during the RSN days. 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. Tuesday's announcement fixes those issues.
"We can anticipate as much as a four-times increase in eyeballs with this organization, which is a dream for us," Smith said.
The transition itself should be pretty seamless for the Jazz. The team was already producing its own games for AT&T SportsNet, and will continue to do so now. Utah Jazz TV broadcasters Craig Bolerjack, Thurl Bailey and Holly Rowe will be back to call games, and Michael Smith and Alema Harrington will continue to host the pre- and postgame TV show.
"Our players work too hard and are too much fun to watch for us to be OK with any fan missing the action," Smith said. "No one has closer proximity to our team than we do, and SEG Media will help Jazz fans experience our organization in a way that has never been possible before, on more channels than ever before."
