Marquee is about to become even less profitable
Crane's savvy negotiations of four years ago are about to bite them in the ass.



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While we were all focused on the Cubs losing games and the process of Greyhound installing a child’s car seat for Nick Madrigal’s long ride to Des Moines, everybody’s favorite “why does he have a job?” fella, Crane Kenney, took to the airwaves to warn us, indirectly of course, that the Cubs are going to be shedding payroll in the not too distant future.
Huh?
With a normal baseball executive you would wave it away as posturing or early negotiating, but if we’ve learned anything during Crane’s 30 year run with the Tribune and the Cubs, it’s that he’s not very good at any of this stuff.
The Cubs distribution deal with Comcast ends in September and Crane, who has never been able to take a hint, must have gotten a pretty stark warning from the folks at Kabletown that his beloved Marquee Sports Network is going to get bumped to a much less lucrative, sports tier.
Marquee is currently on the two TV plans that Comcast’s Xfinity TV service sells the most of, their Popular TV plan that consists of no fewer than 125 channels and their Ultimate TV plan that has 185+.
This is important to the Cubs because it means that anyone who gets either of those plans pays for Marquee whether they ever watch it or not. At approximately $5 a household that adds up.
However, Comcast recently told Sinclair’s “I declare bankruptcy!” Diamond Sports Group that they would no longer be putting any of their Bally-branded regional sports networks on either of those two tiers. Instead, customers would need to add their More Sports and Entertainment Package for $9.95 a month to get their RSNs. Xfinity already requires customers to buy that package to get things like NFL Network, NBA TV, NFL Red Zone, Turner Classic Movies, etc. The price difference isn’t much to the consumer, but it dramatically reduces the number of their customers who get those channels, which dramatically reduces the amount of money Marquee will get from Comcast. What it means is that the Cubs will no longer get money from Xfinity customers who don’t want to watch enough sports to pay extra for them. Which, is going to be a lot of Xfinity customers.