Bally Sports Ohio
Bally Sports Ohio is an American regional sports network owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group and is operated as an affiliate of Bally Sports. The channel broadcasts regional coverage of sports events in the state of Ohio, with a focus on professional sports teams based in Cleveland and Cincinnati, which are broadcast on separate programming feeds, as well as Columbus.
Type
Ohio
Indiana
Kentucky
Northwest Pennsylvania
West Virginia
Southwest New York
Nationwide (via satellite)
February 9, 1989
SportsChannel Ohio (1989–1998)
Fox Sports Ohio (1998–1999, 2008–2021)
Fox Sports Net Ohio (1999–2004)
FSN Ohio (2004–2008)
www.www.ballysports.com/
(U.S. cable internet subscribers only; requires login from participating providers to stream content; some events may not be available due to league rights restrictions)
Bally Sports Ohio is available on cable providers throughout Ohio, as well as parts of Indiana, Kentucky, northwestern Pennsylvania, eastern Tennessee, border communities of West Virginia, and extreme southwestern New York; it is also available nationwide on satellite via DirecTV.
Feeds[edit]
The network operates regional feeds for the Cleveland and Cincinnati markets, both branded as Bally Sports Ohio (but with the latter feed disambiguated in some electronic program guides and online television listings services as "Bally Sports Cincinnati"), which broadcast different events depending on the market. This arrangement can cause event conflicts in the Columbus market, which is located between Cincinnati and Cleveland. In the event of conflicting events between the two regional feeds (typically between the Columbus Blue Jackets and Cleveland Cavaliers, the Blue Jackets and Cincinnati Reds, and the Reds and Cavaliers), cable providers in Central Ohio will carry the other game on an alternate channel.
Programming[edit]
Bally Sports Ohio holds the exclusive regional cable television rights to the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers (since 1990), MLB's Cincinnati Reds (since 1991) and the NHL's Columbus Blue Jackets (since 2000), as well as a select number of the AHL's Cleveland Monsters games. The channel also carries a select number of college basketball games involving the University of Dayton and Northern Kentucky University.[14][15] The network formerly held the local rights to college basketball games featuring Xavier University and the University of Cincinnati through the 2019-20 season.
The channel formerly broadcast Cleveland Indians games from the network's launch as SportsChannel Ohio, until Fox Sports Ohio lost the rights as a result of the team starting eventual sister network SportsTime Ohio in March 2006. Despite this move, Reds games continued to be blacked out in most of Northeast Ohio, the designated market area of the now-Guardians. When Reds games air in the rest of Ohio, the Cleveland feed airs generic national Fox Sports Networks programming unless a local Cleveland event is scheduled. Although Fox Sports Ohio and STO came under common ownership following Fox's purchase of the latter in 2012, Bally Sports Ohio does not share broadcast rights to any sporting events with Bally Sports Great Lakes and vice versa (unlike arrangements that exist between Fox Sports South and Fox Sports Southeast, and Fox Sports Florida and Fox Sports Sun), with both networks maintaining their own respective team television contracts. From 2019 to 2021, Columbus Crew games were split between Fox Sports Ohio and SportsTime Ohio, although those telecasts were blacked out in the Cincinnati area due to the presence of FC Cincinnati.
On October 19, 2016, Fox Sports and the Reds announced an extension of their broadcast agreement to the end of the 2032 season. The deal includes the Reds taking an equity stake in the Cincinnati sub-feed of Fox Sports Ohio.[1]