Hulu+ Live drops Marquee Sports Network

Last February 17, the Cubs, Marquee Sports Network and Hulu+ Live announced a deal between the streaming provider and the channel to carry Cubs games and other programming.

Marquee general manager Mike McCarthy was quoted in the press release:

“We are thrilled to partner with Hulu and add them to our growing list of over 30 affiliates who will carry the network. We’ve heard from countless Hulu subscribers who were keenly interested to see their favorite baseball team. And now, they will!”

And now... they won’t:

So, apparently the deal announced in February was only for this season, and as noted above, it’s not just Marquee, it’s all the Fox RSNs that are owned by Sinclair, as detailed in this Cord Cutters News article:

FS Arizona
FS Detroit
FS Florida
FS Midwest (including FS Indiana and FS Kansas City)
FS North (including FS Wisconsin)
FS Ohio
FS Prime Ticket
FS San Diego
FS South (including FS Tennessee and FS Carolinas)
FS Southeast
FS Southwest (including FS Oklahoma and FS New Orleans)
FS Sun
FS West
Marquee Sports Network
SportsTime Ohio
YES Network

Some of those channels carry local teams besides MLB clubs, but a quick count shows 16 MLB clubs affected by this. Now, it’s entirely possible, as noted in the tweet above, that in the next five months Sinclair and Hulu can come to a deal and restore Marquee and the other RSNs listed, before any baseball games are missed.

But for now, per the Cord Cutters News article:

With fuboTV dropping the channels in January, YouTube TV dropping them in March, and Sling removing the channels last year, the only way to stream the RSNs is with the AT&T TV Now Max plan for $80/month.

This doesn’t seem good for the channels or the providers. As always, we await developments.