NBC Sports Chicago (formerly Comcast SportsNet Chicago) is an American regional sports network that broadcasts regional coverage of professional sports teams in the Chicago metropolitan area, as well as college sports events and original sports-related news, discussion and entertainment programming. It is branded as part of the NBC Sports Regional Networks.
NBC Sports Chicago is owned by a consortium of Comcast (which owns 25% through the NBC Sports Group unit of NBCUniversal), Chicago Bulls and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf (who owns a 50% majority interest), and the Wirtz Corporation, owner of the Chicago Blackhawks, (who owns 25%). The Chicago Cubs, through the Tribune Company and later the family of J. Joseph Ricketts, formerly owned a 20% stake in the network from its launch until the Cubs ended their broadcasts on the network after the end of the 2019 season, with that percentage equally distributed in 5% increments to the remaining partners after that point.
The channel is available on cable and fiber optic television providers in most of Illinois, and throughout northwest Indiana, Iowa, Kenosha County, Wisconsin and southwest Michigan and nationwide on satellite provider DirecTV. The network maintains main studios and offices located at 350 North Orleans Street, inside the River North Point Center in the Near North Side area.
History
In November 2003, Jerry Reinsdorf, Bill Wirtz and the Tribune Company decided to end their cable television agreements for the Bulls, White Sox, Cubs and Blackhawks with FSN Chicago, stripping that network of broadcast rights to all of the professional sports teams in the Chicago area. All three team owners decided to enter into a partnership with Comcast to form a new regional sports network, to be named Comcast SportsNet Chicago, whose launch was formally announced on December 2. CSN Chicago was created in order for the four teams to have editorial control over their broadcasts, although the network continued to share the rights to the Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks and Bulls with WGN-TV (channel 9; which is owned by Tribune) and (until 2014) WCIU-TV (channel 26).
Comcast SportsNet Chicago launched on October 1, 2004. At that time, with the loss of all four teams from its lineup, FSN Chicago was effectively left with only events from some minor local and semi-professional teams, national programming from Fox Sports Net, and Midwestern outdoors programs on its schedule; many cable and satellite providers in northeastern Illinois and northwest Indiana also chose to replace FSN Chicago with CSN Chicago upon its launch.
After Rainbow Media shut down FSN Chicago on June 23, 2006, Comcast SportsNet Chicago acquired the regional cable television rights to broadcast sports events, discussion and entertainment programs intended for national distribution to the Fox Sports regional networks. The network subsequently relocated its operations into FSN Chicago's former studio facilities on Orleans Street (which NBC Sports Chicago now also shares with the offices of the Chicago Sun-Times).
On April 2, 2007, the Tribune Company announced its intent to sell its shares in both Comcast SportsNet Chicago and the Chicago Cubs as part of the company's $8.2 billion purchase by real estate magnate Sam Zell.
After inheriting the team from father Bill Wirtz upon his death in September 2007, new Chicago Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz decided to lift his father's years-long ban on local televised coverage of the team's home games (which the elder Wirtz imposed as a means to sustain ticket sales). On March 30, 2008, the Blackhawks announced a new broadcasting rights agreement. The team renewed CSN Chicago's broadcast rights (with the network carrying the bulk of the games), while local broadcasts were split between CSN Chicago and WGN-TV effective with the 2008–09 season; all of the team's games (both home and away) would be televised in high definition (due to the NHL's broadcast contracts, including ironically one with eventual Comcast division NBCUniversal, WGN-TV was barred from carrying its share of Blackhawks telecasts on its former national superstation feed WGN America, although its game telecasts were available in Canada through the station's carriage as a superstation on domestic cable and satellite providers).
Comcast SportsNet Chicago, along with the other Comcast SportsNet-branded networks, implemented a new network logo style (utilizing Comcast's then-universal corporate logo) and graphics package on October 1, 2008, coinciding with the fourth anniversary of the network's launch.