MLB’s Rangers were already going well against the grain with their 2024 plans for local broadcasting, and now it’s becoming more clear just how much so.
Less than two weeks after the Rangers struck a live-streaming deal with the upstart Victory+—eschewing both a return to regional sports network operator Main Street Sports and MLB’s in-house model for local media—the club announced the creation of both a local media venture and a new holding company.
The newly formed Rangers Sports Media & Entertainment Company will house two major assets: the Rangers Sports Network and the preexisting Rev Entertainment. The latter is a sports and entertainment company that exclusively books events at both Globe Life Field and Choctaw Stadium and also has ancillary production and marketing capabilities. Those facilities are the Rangers’ current and former home ballparks.
Rangers Sports Network will produce and distribute the club’s local television broadcasts and is pursuing various cable and over-the-air deals. One arrived late Tuesday with DirecTV, giving the fledgling effort a big boost with the No. 3 U.S. pay-TV provider.
The effort is already serious enough, though, that Neil Leibman, the club’s president of business operations and COO, will leave that role to chair Rangers Sports Media & Entertainment Company and focus on that position fully. Rangers CRO Jim Cochrane will become the club’s EVP and chief business officer and have oversight of many of the areas being vacated by Leibman.
“We determined that the best path forward toward providing our fans with more options is to handle many of the broadcast obligations in-house,” said Rangers majority owner Ray Davis.
The club’s moves also further the status of Dallas as a major test case in a U.S. sports media business being dramatically remade. In addition to the Rangers’ efforts, the NBA’s Mavericks distribute their games through their MavsTV streaming platform and over-the-air TV stations owned by Tegna. The NHL’s Stars, meanwhile, show their games locally through Victory+.
