About five months after sealing the deal to purchase the Tennis Channel for $350 million, Sinclair Broadcast Group has expanded the sports network’s reach to 47 million households according to measurement company comScore, with an eye toward more than 60 million homes by 2017.
The increases are the result of several distribution deals Sinclair has made since closing the deal in March. In announcing the deal, Sinclair said it had secured deals to expand Tennis Channel’s reach by about 20 million homes, from its base at the time of about 30 million homes. Since then, Sinclair said Tennis Channel was available in about 37 million homes in February, its last full month as an independent network.
Earlier this month Sinclair EVP and chief operating officer David Amy said the sports channel added about 1 million new customers through its carriage deal with Charter Communications. Sinclair said in a statement that the Tennis Channel is carried on expanded basic or digital basic packages on Bright House, Dish Network, Frontier, Suddenlink, Time Warner Cable and Cable One, with similar rollouts planned for AT&T U-verse, Buckeye, Comcast, DirecTV, Mediacom, Cincinnati Bell and WOW!
That number could get even larger as the network heads toward its eighth consecutive year of coverage of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, which began today (Aug. 29).
