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It’s been a month and a half since Charter hired The Raine Group to sell Spectrum SportsNet, the Los Angeles cable home of the Lakers, and dozens of companies have seemingly expressed interest, from private equity firms to traditional media companies. Mark Walter, who recently became the team’s owner, has also shown openness to taking ownership of Spectrum SportsNet away from Charter, which doesn’t see a long-term play in keep ing the R.S.N. in its portfolio. Now, the burden is on Raine to distinguish the real potential acquirers from those kicking the tires for their own gain—to learn about the economics of the business to fuel some other investment thesis, say, or just out of morbid grinfucking curiosity.
Spectrum's deal with the Lakers reportedly pays them an average of $150 million through 2032, the single entity that drives the team's financial advantage over its rivals. It's roughly triple the average of the rest of the league, sources said. Last year, NBA teams received about $110 million each from the national rights deals. This year, that number is boosting to more than $140 million as part of a new 11-year, $77 billion agreement with ESPN, Amazon and NBC. Earlier this year, the New York Knicks, who have the second-largest local media deal, accepted a 28% reduction in annual payments due to financial problems at rights holder MSG Network. The Knicks had been receiving $135 million a year before the reduction.
Sports are also the primary reason why NBC can continue to raise retransmission fees when it has carriage negotiations with the biggest pay TV operators (Charter, DirecTV, YouTube TV, etc.). The numbers get a little fuzzy here, but it’s a major reason traditional broadcasters pay billions for the NFL and NBA. While millions of people cancel cable TV each year, networks that have must-see sports have historically been able to raise rates in the face of cord-cutting because rabid fans want to see their favorite teams and players.
Charter Communications’ intent to sell the Lakers’ Spectrum SportsNet RSN could hinge on new team owner Mark Walter accepting a lower media rights fee from any prospective buyer, according to industry experts. The Lakers’ local rights fee for the 2025-26 season is a league-high $192.10M -- nearly twice as much as the Knicks’ second-highest fee of $106.56M -- with the Lakers’ rights then climbing to $199.78M in 2026-27, $209.76M in 2027-28 and $218.14M in 2028-29. The team’s rights fee in the final year of the deal in 2031-32 is undisclosed, but sources speculate it to be nearly $250M.
Could that future — one broadcast channel and one streaming app for the Dodgers and Lakers — become reality now that Mark Walter, the controlling owner of the Dodgers, is the new controlling owner of the Lakers? Walter hasn’t yet talked publicly about the Lakers deal, so we floated the idea by sports business insiders. The Lakers are on Spectrum SportsNet. The Dodgers are on SportsNet LA. Who owns those channels? Charter Communications, the parent company of Spectrum, owns SportsNet. The Dodgers, through an affiliated company, own SportsNet LA, although Charter operates it and pays the team a rights fee every year, just as it does with the Lakers.
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Redick is not concerned about his two stars though despite their Olympic runs, as he explained on Spectrum’s Lakeshow Podcast: “I mean, look, those guys are professionals in every sense of the word. My concern for them about whether or not they’ll be ready to play on Oct. 22 and be in shape, I don’t have that concern. We’re gonna work with Mike and Ish making sure that they feel that they’re in a great place to start the regular season. They’ll certainly be involved in training camp and the preseason here in September as well as preseason games.”
The hope was that after having a full offseason to rest and recover that Vanderbilt would be ready to go for training camp, which kicks off at the end of September. It doesn’t appear that is the case though as Mike Bresnahan reported on Spectrum’s ‘Lakeshow’ Podcast that Vanderbilt may not be ready for the start of training camp: “Vando is gonna be interesting. I’m not sure he’ll be ready for training camp or even for the preseason games. It’s a foot injury. He opted not to have a procedure in-season when he got hurt in February. So we’ll see if he’s ready to go. I don’t have a lot of details on it but I’m not sure he’ll be ready for training camp. Regular season is a different story, hopefully he’s ready by then. But nothing concrete on him yet.”
For the NBA’s part, officials believe the odds favor playing out the remainder of the season under the terms of the contingency deal. That Diamond has been able to hash out short-term extensions with top operators Comcast and DirecTV, while also making headway on a similar stopgap measure with Charter Communications suggests the RSN owner is sincere in its stated intent to have once last go-round with its three league partners.
Broadcasters are viewing the opportunity to carry local NBA, NHL and MLB games as an unexpected pathway to boost the fees they receive from pay TV operators like Comcast , Charter or DirecTV for the right to carry their stations. Broadcast companies typically tie all of their stations together when they renegotiate contracts with pay TV carriers. That makes local sports unusually valuable.
"That team plays like Road Runner, so we’ve got to get rest," James said of the Warriors during an interview with Spectrum network after the Lakers beat Golden State 117-112 at Chase Center in San Francisco. Thought the Lakers had a victory in the bag when they went up 14 points with less than six minutes to play? Beep-beep. Back came the peripatetic Warriors, blitzing the Lakers with a 14-0 run fueled by Steph Curry and the team's other sharp shooters. "They drive you crazy," James told Spectrum, and of the Warriors he also said, "You got to hold your composure with this team."
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Vogel hopped on Spectrum’s “LakeShow” podcast on Wednesday and shed some light on AD’s apparent physical transformation this summer. Clearly, Davis’ new look has Vogel feeling particularly optimistic about the upcoming season. “He put a lot of work this off-season into his body, a lot of work,” Vogel said. “We had a moment maybe two weeks ago, where he had been training at home and we had a lot of conversations about concerns we have with our team … And (AD) comes in for a workout, the first time we’ve seen him for a while, and his body looked imposing. And we all just looked at each other like, ‘We’re going to be really good this year. Just looking at that guy right there, we’re going to be really good this year.'”
It had to be just a casual five-on-five session at Spectrum. However, it's never casual when Michael Jordan is in the building. Hornets' principal owner and chairman was on the sidelines with front office guys, watching their players competing. Kulboka, the Hornets two-way player, was decent. Once, he made a mistake reading the help on the defensive end. He didn't have much time to figure out the Hornets' defensive schemes. But suddenly, the greatness happened. "And then I hear Michael Jordan yelling at me that I had to help," Kulboka recalls with a smile. "It was very interesting."
Turns out Phil Jackson had an even quicker ejection than the heave ho Spurs coach Gregg Popovich received 63 seconds into Wednesday's 113-85 loss to Denver. Lead official Darrell Garretson ejected Jackson just 27 seconds into Chicago's 113-100 win over Philadelphia at the Spectrum on March 24, 1993. Jackson was ejected for showing up Garretson, who was also the NBA's director of officiating, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Hornets Sports & Entertainment and Charter Communications today announced that Spectrum Center has officially replaced Time Warner Cable Arena as the name of the Hornets’ home arena in Uptown Charlotte. The new name follows Time Warner Cable’s merger with Charter Communications and reflects the brand name of Charter’s all-digital TV, internet and voice offerings. The venue’s new website is spectrumcentercharlotte.com. The updated social media handles for the arena are Facebook.com/spectrumcentercharlotte, @spectrumcenter on Twitter and @spectrumcenter on Instagram.