Fubo generated some headlines this week — to include an article in this publication — after the company announced it will start carrying Texas Rangers baseball games on its streaming platform as part of a lucrative deal that includes sponsorship opportunities at the team’s home stadium Globe Life Field.
Turns out, Fubo isn’t the only pay TV doing business with the Rangers.
On Thursday, satellite and streaming pay TV provider DirecTV said it, too, signed up to be a sponsor of the Texas Rangers and Globe Life Field, which will include DirecTV signage and messaging throughout various parts of the stadium.
Those advertisements will include the prominent placement of the DirecTV logo on the stadium’s video board, its cross-stadium LED ribbons and on IPTV programming throughout the venue.
DirecTV has carried the Rangers Sports Network since it launched in January, with the channel available to its residential satellite and streaming customers, as well as DirecTV for Business clients.
One of DirecTV’s enterprise clients is, in fact, Globe Life Field itself: Screens carrying the Rangers Sports Network within the stadium will be powered by DirecTV for Business, a spokesperson for the company affirmed to The Desk. Additionally, the Rangers Sports Network — which is already carried in DirecTV’s traditional TV packages — will become available as an add-on within its $70 per month MySports package that debuted last year for baseball fans within the Rangers’ broadcast area.
The Texas Rangers are one of several baseball teams whose games were previously offered on regional sports networks operated by Diamond Sports Group. Diamond Sports filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, a move that allowed Major League Baseball (MLB) and some of its clubs to retake local TV rights to their games.
Diamond Sports, now Main Street Sports, opted out of its TV agreement with the Texas Rangers and a handful of other teams last year. The club founded its own media enterprise and inked deals with local cable TV providers and the streaming service Victory Plus (stylized as Victory+) for carriage of the Rangers Sports Network, which debuted earlier this year.
