I’m sorry to report there is no good news for you here, sports fans. Fox regional sports programming is disappearing from yet another streaming service—this time, it’s Hulu.
Beginning Friday, live TV plans that previously supported Sinclair-owned regional sports networks will no longer have access to that programming. In a note on its support page, Hulu said that subscribers to its live TV service “will still have access to a wide variety of national and local networks depending on your location,” including ESPN, TBS, TNT, FS1, FS2, Fox, CBS, NBC, and ABC, among others, but that it would be losing over a dozen Fox regional sports networks. Those include:
FS Arizona
FS Detroit
FS Florida
FS Midwest (including FS Indiana and FS Kansas City)
FS North (including FS Wisconsin)
FS Ohio
FS Prime Ticket
FS San Diego
FS South (including FS Tennessee and FS Carolinas)
FS Southeast
FS Southwest (including FS Oklahoma and FS New Orleans)
FS Sun
FS West
Marquee Sports Network
SportsTime Ohio
YES Network
Neither Sinclair nor Hulu immediately returned a request for comment.
Hulu is merely the latest of a growing number of services that have lost regional sports channels owned by Sinclair after YouTube TV lost support last month. Barry Faber, Sinclair’s president of distribution and network relations, said in a statement at the time that it continued to be “in discussions in an effort to find a mutually acceptable path to returning the RSNs to Youtube TV.” Meanwhile, Fubo TV, a sports-leaning streaming service that supports live TV, lost support for Fox regional sports earlier this year—though it did later pick up ESPN programming.
In a statement cited by Variety, Faber this week said that Sinclair “offered Hulu a deal consistent with terms agreed to by other distributors, the streaming service refused to accept these fair and market-based terms.”
As ever, reliable sports programming for cord-cutters remains an elusive unicorn. Good grief.
