Sinclair’s chief revenue officer, Rob Weisbord noted that 75% of customers who signed up for a free trial, kept their subscription, instead of canceling it. Weisbord also noted that the amount of time that subscribers are spending watching games on the streaming service is “significant”. Stating that “33% more minutes were used by direct consumer users versus TV Everywhere users.” So they are only comparing streaming users here, and not those that still have cable and have Bally Sports through a cable box. A big problem for Sinclair and its streaming service is the lack of baseball. Sinclair currently only has the streaming rights for five baseball teams: Detroit Tigers, Milwaukee Brewers, Miami Marlins, Kansas City Royals and the Tampa Bay Rays. Sinclair is working to add more teams, but haven’t given any updates about when and who might get added.
Sinclair won’t disclose how many subscribers it has
So far, Sinclair has not disclosed how many streaming subscribers it has, but it can’t be that many. Considering Bally Sports Plus was only available six markets, and the only sports it was able to broadcast was baseball. So the numbers will likely jump quite a bit next month once it is made available in more markets, and has more sports available. Prior to the launch, many were expecting Sinclair’s bid for a streaming service to fail. Commissioners from some of the sports leagues were even saying it won’t work, because Sinclair doesn’t have enough content. And at $20 per month or $190/year, it’s not a cheap subscription service, Netflix is still cheaper surprisingly. And since you are only getting your local teams here, it’s not cheap and it’s surprising to see everyone sticking with the service. Sinclair is still expecting to hit 5 to 10 million subscribers in the next year or two. We’ll have to wait and see if that happens.
