Television broadcaster Sinclair, Inc. earned $405 million in political advertising last year that boosted the company’s top line revenue to nearly $3.6 billion in 2024.
In its fourth quarter (Q4) and full-year financial disclosure report released on Wednesday, Sinclair said its political ad income was 16 percent higher compared to the comparable presidential election period in 2020, excluding a runoff period associated with the Georgia election that year.
Total revenue during Q4 exceeded $1 billion, bringing Sinclair’s 2024 total revenue to $3.548 billion, up 13 percent compared to the prior year. Revenue attributed to the company’s media operations accounted for the majority of its income — $3.511 billion, up 13 percent from the $3.106 billion earned in 2023.
Total advertising income for 2024 clocked in at $1.611 billion, including $1.206 billion in non-political advertising income. Distribution revenue — which consists mainly of fees charged to cable, satellite and some streaming TV providers — rose to $1.746 billion, up nearly 4 percent compared to the prior year.
“We are pleased to close out a strong 2024, and we have entered 2025 on a high note,” Chris Ripley, the CEO of Sinclair, said in a statement. “Our consolidated Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter exceeded our guidance range, along with various other key financial metrics. This performance underscores the continued dominance of broadcast TV as the leading platform for advertisers to reach broad audiences.”
Ripley said the company is well-positioned for the current year after it executed on a “comprehensive refinancing” strategy that extended certain debt maturities, removed risk from its balance sheet and provided greater financial flexibility over the long term.
“Our balance sheet now has the longest maturity profile in the industry,” Ripley affirmed. “Following the refinancing, we can turn our attention to deploying the Ventures cash balance in multiple ways, such as outside investments that we could consolidate in our financial results, as well as the potential for returning a portion of the cash to shareholders over time.”
Ripley also affirmed the company renewed most of its retransmission agreements with pay TV providers and is working through most of its network affiliation deals, the latter of which is expected to be completed before 2026.
“We have greatly enhanced visibility on both our retransmission revenues as well as our reverse retransmission expenses for the next several years,” Ripley said. “We remain confident in the power of broadcast TV, including the new opportunities for our joint venture, EdgeBeam, which we expect to drive meaningful advancements for NextGen Broadcast in the years ahead.”
Sinclair has been a proponent of NextGen TV, which leverages the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard to deliver enhanced video and datacasting capabilities that are not possible with the current ATSC 1.0 digital TV standard. Sinclair participates in Pearl TV, an industry group that helps develop, advance and market ATSC 3.0 under the consumer brand “NextGen TV,” and is a joint participant in EdgeBeam Wireless, which is exploring ways to commercialize ATSC 3.0’s datacasting possibilities for uses beyond TV.
On Wednesday, the National Association of Broadcasters — the industry lobbying group that represents the interests of Sinclair and other commercial TV broadcasters — made public a proposal to implement a new rule at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that mandates a hard transition away from ATSC 1.0 broadcasting in favor of ATSC 3.0 on an exclusive basis. Under the proposal, Sinclair and other broadcasters would be required to switch off their ATSC 1.0 signals by February 2028 in the top 55 TV markets across the country, while other broadcast TV stations would need to make the switch no later than February 2030.
Reached for comment on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Sinclair said the company is “very much in favor” of the proposal to wind down ATSC 1.0 broadcasting.
