Marquee, CHSN: A possible merger?

Comcast impasse with both fueling speculation

According to a report from the Puck newsletter, local regional sports networks CHSN (Chicago Sports Network) and Marquee may be seeking to merge. 

CHSN and Marquee have a common enemy: Comcast, the largest cable provider in Chicago, had refused to add CHSN to its network and plans to move Marquee to a higher, more expensive tier.

Marquee is home to the Cubs, Sky, Chicago Bears post-game press conferences, and student-produced high school sports; CHSN is the home of Blackhawks, Bulls, and White Sox, which launched in October. CHSN has gained carriage on DirecTV, over-the-air station WJYS on channels 62.2 and 62.3, and most cable systems -except Mediacom, Charter, and Comcast – the three largest companies. 

Marquee had been operating on a series of extensions with Comcast since October when their contract expired. 

For Marquee, there’s time to work out a deal since the baseball season doesn’t begin until the spring. Sinclair, who is a minority owner, is also in negotiations with Comcast with its local stations for new retrans deals in markets such as Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, Seattle, Salt Lake City, and Baltimore, where Sinclair is headquartered.

“Chatter about a potential merger between Marquee and CSN has only grown louder in recent weeks”, wrote John Ourand in the Puck newsletter. “Sinclair, which owns a minority stake in Marquee, has been trying to work out a deal with Comcast to replace the contract that expired at the end of baseball season. At the same time, Sinclair is negotiating a new Comcast deal for its local TV stations.”

Neither CHSN nor Marquee commented on the rumors.

CHSN head Jason Coyle recently met with the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board. The Trib blasted CHSN in an editorial Tuesday for failing to make a deal with Comcast in a larger piece about the sorry state of Chicago sports (the Trib board has a tradition of writing about issues not important to everyday Chicagoans, from Dancing With The Stars to the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, and of course, publishes the occasional racist commentary.)

If the two were to merge, it would reunite the Cubs with the other Chicago teams for the first time since departing NBC Sports Chicago in 2019. 

A merger would give both RSNs considerable leverage with Comcast and other cable holdouts. The wild card is CHSN’s partner (Standard Media) is a small station group with just four properties and a subsidiary of hedge fund Standard General, whose managing partner and Chief Investment Officer Soo Kim happens to be the Chairman of Bally’s, who is opening a temporary casino at the Medinah Temple in River North until the new glitzier facility opens in 2026 at River West. With the new Trump administration coming in, restrictions on mergers are likely to ease, allowing Standard General to sell their stations – and their share in CHSN if they choose to do so but with a small number of properties, the unit could easily be swallowed up by bigger broadcasters like Sinclair, Nexstar, or Gray. 

Although Chicago is known as a strong sports town, all its teams are currently in extended slumps, causing casual fans and even some die-hard supporters to tune out, which results in lower ratings and advertising revenue. It’s even worse for CHSN, with the added baggage of carriage issues and two last-place teams on its roster. With these struggles, Comcast and the other holdouts are in no rush to make any deal whose network is the sports equivalent of Dr. Phil’s new little-watched Merit Street – just bad programming all around.