Like many other sports team around the world, the Chicago Cubs have created their own television network, Marquee where games will be shown this upcoming season. The sports cable channel is scheduled to launch on Feb. 22, with the first spring training game pitting the Cubs against the Oakland Athletics. The game also will air on the Cubs’ radio partner, Entercom.
Though details remain sketchy about what will fill much of the air time on the network beyond live game telecasts and pre- and postgame analysis shows, Marquee officials say the sports cable channel will broadcast 28 Cubs spring training games altogether — a total that Marquee touts as “the most spring training games ever aired by a Cubs television partner in franchise history.”
While Marquee currently has deals in place to run on a handful of carriers, including DirecTV, U-verse, AT&T TV, Charter Communications and Mediacom Communication, it is lost on no one that it’s still negotiating with many others, including Comcast’s Xfinity, the Chicago-area’s largest carrier with an estimated 1.5 million households.
Unless a deal is done in the next few days, that could mean some Cubs fans may only have a radio option for tuning into spring training games and possibly regular season games as well.
With or without Comcast, Marquee is expected to run an ad campaign to raise awareness of the cable station’s launch. Schafer Condon Carter of Chicago, ad agency of record for the Cubs, has been involved in developing the ad campaign. Bits of the new work were shown at the annual Cubs fan convention in Chicago last month.
I spend a lot of my free time in the summer, watching baseball on TV mostly because there is nothing else on, but it can be entertaining. At home, I have Comcast Xfinity like tons of others who live in the Chicago area, I will be really disappointed if I am unable to watch the games.
I was upset when the Cubs’ announced that they would be creating their own cable channel, because their games were always available on regular cable channels, I do not want to necessarily pay extra for the channel, but it would be something I might be interested in. With them not having a deal with Comcast takes away so many possible viewers, like myself. It is very unfortunate and seems greedy on the Cubs’ end.
What do you guys think of teams having specific channel that you have to subscribe to just for their games?
All Things Sports With Cheyenne 
I find this new development incredibly out of left field (pardon the pun). It seems to become more and more obvious every day that cable is dying and it seems like the worst possible time to be creating a cable channel. Although the cubs are also going to be broadcast on DirecTV, U-verse, AT&T TV, Charter Communications and Mediacom Communication, the inclusion of a cable channel seems unnecessary. Even my elderly grandparents have Netflix and HBO. I also found it surprising that individual teams have begun creating their own channels. Although I am not very involved in sports, I cannot imagine that the Chicago Cubs would be able to fill 24 hours a day with interesting content pertaining to the team. I am curious as to what these team-specific channels look like.
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I think baseball franchises need to think more about fans who have less access to premium cable and to social media, as they have experimented with airing games exclusively on Facebook Live and YouTube TV in the past few years. It makes me think of my grandmother who LOVED to watch baseball games and wouldn’t be able to see the game if it were on social media or on a premium cable channel. I’m sure this won’t sit well with a lot of fans who can’t easily access a specialty channel, so I would recommend that teams try and show as many games on regular cable/network television as possible because in the end, that will attract the most fan viewership. I’m hoping the Cubs and Comcast work out a deal!
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