After inking a deal with Tegna last month, the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday announced NBA games will be available to for free to local fans across more over-the-air broadcast TV stations in Texas.
The expanded deal will see Mavericks games that aren’t exclusively nationally televised air on eight additional broadcast stations, joining six owned by Tegna and making them available to approximately 14 million people in Texas. Station owners broadcasting Mavericks games include Gray Television, Nexstar and Sinclair, expanding reach in northern Texas and surrounding areas. The broadcasts start with the Mavs vs Suns game on October 26, featuring 70 or more games in total the first season.
Stations include:
- Amarillo, TX – KFDA 10.2 (Independent – Gray)
- El Paso, TX – KDBC 4.2 (MyNetworkTV – Sinclair)
- Harlingen-Brownsville, TX – KGBT 4.1 (MyNetworkTV – Nexstar)
- Laredo, TX – KXNU 10.2 (Gray Sports – Gray)
- Lubbock, TX – KMYL 14.1 (MyNetworkTV – Gray)
- Sherman, TX – KXII 12.2 (MyNetworkTV – Gray)
- Shreveport, LA & Texarkana, TX – KSHV 45.1 (MyNetworkTV – Nexstar)
- Wichita Falls, TX & Lawton, OK – KJBO 3.2 (MyNetworkTV – Nexstar)
The NBA Mavericks said pre and post-show games will be available in most markets.
The professional basketball team in September signed a deal to bring their local games to broadcast via Tegna, as it sought new distribution avenues after agreeing to terminate its contract with the bankrupt Diamond Sports Group, the owner of the embattled Bally Sports-branded regional sports network (RSN) that is under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The Mavs are just one example of a professional sports team formerly in the struggling RSN model that’s now looking to broadcast as a way to provide reach and engage audiences, as local fans deal with their own challenges in finding easy paths to watch their favorite team.
Expanded access to games is one of the aims of the new distribution deal with additional broadcast partners.
“Providing access to games has always been our top priority,” said Dallas Mavericks CEO Cynt Marshall, in a statement. “We are thrilled to work with WFAA to bring more fun and excitement to all of our MFFLs across North Texas and beyond.”
In addition, Tegna’s recently rebranded KFAA Dallas-Ft. Worth station will broadcast all games, with all games airing on the station in the Dallas-Ft. Worth market also available through pay TV providers including AT&T U-Verse, Charter Spectrum, DirecTV, Dish, Frontier Fiber Keller, Fubo TV, GEUS, Grande Communications, OneSource Communications and Optimum.
For leagues and teams, partnering with broadcasters to deliver free access to local games gives the chance to widen its audience and pull in both existing and younger fans. Broadcasters, meanwhile, have the opportunity to deliver audience and engagement for not only the sports teams but advertisers that want to be around the live programming and viewers sports brings.
“We’re thrilled by the positive response from fans and advertising partners as we gear up to significantly expand the reach of Mavs games,” said Brad Ramsey, SVP of media operations at Tegna, in a statement. “We are grateful to our partner stations from Gray, Nexstar, and Sinclair for helping us create more excitement, for more fans, in even more homes across Texas.”
Together Tegna and its WFAA station in Dallas are leading local and regional advertising and sponsorship sales for all local games.
The topic of sports was the focus of a panel session at the CIMM Summit in New York last week moderated by TVREV analyst Alan Wolk. Speakers from media agencies PMG and Havas Media shared the sentiment that sports are a key attraction for both live TV viewers and advertising.
“Sports, at the end of the day, is such a cultural phenomenon,” said Sam Bloom of Fort Worth-based PMG during the session. “It’s one of the few things that I think people make an appointment with their television to watch.”
And while the NFL tends to make people think about sports as a national phenomenon, Bloom – former CEO of Dallas-based independent media agency Camelot that was acquired by PMG in 2023 - views it as more of a local one, where people are passionate about their favorite teams.
Similarly, Laurie Crowley, SVP group director of Investment at Havas Media, borrowed a Monty Python quote, saying TV’s “not dead yet” and that she thinks “sports is a big part of that.”
The executive went on to describe why ad buyers are so keen on sports.
“At Havas what we really try to do to guide our clients’ campaigns through their KPIs and objectives is to find meaningful moments through connection, context and content. And sports delivers that,” Crowley said. “They deliver these passionate, engaged audiences that we can speak to in a moment in time when they’re excited about something, they’re leaned into it, and they’re ready to kind of have that engagement with brands as well.”
Bloom noted that advertising has also always been part of that sports consumption experience, where Crowley agreed, saying “audiences are primed for it.”
That said, measuring sports, particularly as they shift to new distribution modes like CTV and direct-to-consumer apps, is one area where the discussion indicated there’s work to do.
Acknowledging it’s a period of transition for local sports, Crowley noted that audiences in local markets are very passionate about their teams. However, “with the cracks in the foundations with the RSNs, it’s becoming more and more difficult to make sure that you’re making those connections with those local audiences and accessing that inventory in a way that is transparent and delivers against what you need.”
While local sports remains challenging, she also described it as a time of “increased exploration” and doing due diligence about inventory sources as new opportunities come to the marketplace, like sports DTC efforts.