Sports fans rejoice, as Sinclair has a new app coming to you next spring. During the RBC TMT Conference today, President and CEO Chris Ripley revealed that the company will be launching a new app to replace Fox Sports Go. The current Fox Sports Go app provides access to live sports and other content from Fox Regional Sports Networks.
“This will have much more functionality and activity and be much more engaging for our consumers. There are about 700 million annual impressions that sit on the Fox Sports Go platform which are very much under optimized and under sold and we’ll be able to do much more with those,” he stated. “The new platform will be the launch pad for things we’re going to do around sports betting, gamification, fandom based community and direct-to-consumer.”
Just yesterday, news broke that the company is debating the sale of naming rights to its 21 regional sports networks (RSN) to sports-betting partners. The naming rights to the networks could be sold collectively or individually. SBG secured them in a deal with Disney in August 2019, paying $9.6 billion for what is currently known as the Fox Sports Networks.
The 21 sports nets broadcast rights to 42 professional clubs in the NBA, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League. The big three leagues would need to approve any naming deal. The expected change is not a surprise; the Fox name was only granted for a limited period of use.
The news also speculated that the Fox Sports Go app, part of the RSN acquisition, may also be revamped to provide direct-to-consumer content or possible gaming additions.