Tom Hicks’ vision of starting his own regional sports network is apparently dead.
After months of talks, Mr. Hicks’ Southwest Sports Group and Fox Sports Net agreed Wednesday to a 15-year broadcast partnership that keeps half of the Texas Rangers telecasts on Fox Sports Southwest. Fox Sports also keeps the Dallas Stars and adds the Mesquite Championship Rodeo to its lineup.
Financial terms were not disclosed, but the deal “is worth hundreds of millions of dollars,” Mr. Hicks said.
With the leverage of owning the Stars and the Rangers, Mr. Hicks was able to make the cable rights valuable enough to push forward despite sometimes bitter negotiations. Since Fox Sports is an established network, it guaranteed delivery of the Rangers and Stars games right away.
That finally helped forge an agreement, putting an end to the idea of Mr. Hicks’ regional sports network, said Mike Cramer, Southwest Sports Group’s chief operating officer.
“We would not create one now,” Mr. Cramer said. “Essentially, we’re throwing ourselves in with Fox for a regional sports network. The primary concern was to maximize our assets. Fox brings distribution, they’re already out there. If we had done it on our own, we would have competed with them directly.”
Under the agreement, Fox Sports Net will televise 80 of the Rangers’ 162 regular-season games, a 13 percent increase from this season’s telecasts. Wednesday night’s broadcast was the 58th of 59 Rangers games on Fox Sports Southwest this year.
Fox Sports also will broadcast 40 of 82 Stars games and 24 one-hour programs from the Mesquite Championship Rodeo, both controlled by Southwest Sports Group.
When Mr. Hicks purchased the Rangers for $250 million in January 1998, the Stars owner revealed plans to combine his sports and broadcast interests. He envisioned packaging his two sports teams with other sports programming, possibly including the Dallas Mavericks, into one entity that would broadcast them in the local market.
The Arlington-D/FW area was one of the so-called big media markets, but Mr. Hicks said the Stars and Rangers weren’t bringing in enough revenue in cable rights. The New York Yankees make $50 million alone from their cable contract with the Madison Square Garden Network, a joint venture between Cablevision Systems Corp. and Fox.
Mr. Hicks identified potential partners as Fox Sports Net, ESPN and NBC.
In August, Mr. Hicks said he was close to a deal to forge a partnership for a regional sports network with Fox Sports. Earlier this month, though, both sides acknowledged that negotiations between Mr. Hicks and Fox Sports were on the rocks.
But a deal appeared inevitable.
Mr. Hicks had the teams to provide summer and winter programming, giving his company a strong bargaining position, Mr. Cramer said.
“It would have been weak without the Stars and Rangers,” Mr. Cramer said. “Fox clearly had a vested interest in keeping us.”
Fox Sports also had leverage: It reaches 6.3 million cable and satellite television homes in the Southwest’s five-state region, which includes Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and parts of New Mexico.
It would have taken two or more years for Southwest Sports Group to line up cable systems with comparable customers, Mr. Cramer said.
To duplicate the reach of Fox Sports Net Southwest, for example, Mr. Hicks’ company would have the costly and time-consuming task of signing deals with 1,300 cable systems.
“It would have been an inconvenience for the fans,” Mr. Cramer said.