NBA's Trail Blazers Make Bold Move to Offer Free TV and Team Streaming Service

The Portland Trail Blazers are making franchise history by broadcasting the majority of their local games over the air for the first time.

Several weeks after announcing that the team has severed ties with Root Sports Northwest, Oregon’s NBA franchise is returning to the free airwaves through a multiyear agreement with Sinclair’s ABC affiliate KATU (Channel 2) and Spanish-language Univision affiliate KUNP (Channel 16). The local broadcast arrangement between the team and Sinclair is billed as the Rip City Television Network, which also includes Sinclair affiliates in Eugene, Medford, the Yakima/Pasco region and Seattle, which has aired Blazers games since the Supersonics moved to Oklahoma City.

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Portland will also offer the latest iteration of BlazerVision, a paid direct-to-consumer streaming platform available to most viewers in Oregon and neighboring Washington state.

The news about KATU was first reported late Monday evening by Danny Marang of KFXX 1080 in Portland.

According to the team’s press release, BlazerVision will cost $120 for the full season or $19.99 per month. The service also has a unique hook compared to others around pro sports: Fans who sign up for the full season before Nov. 1 will get two upper deck tickets to any Blazers home game. Current full-season and half-season ticket holders will also receive free one-year subscriptions to BlazerVision.

After finishing last in the Western Conference with a 21-61 record, Portland has just four scheduled nationally televised appearances in 2024-25—three games on NBA TV and one on TNT in January when Milwaukee Bucks guard Damian Lillard makes his second trip back to Portland since 2023’s blockbuster trade.

The end of its contract with Root Sports came nearly a week before the NBA’s schedule release in late August. Because the Blazers were in talks with potential broadcast partners, the team released a schedule without listing a linear or streaming home.

The NBA, NHL and MLB had been concerned about the crumbling infrastructure of regional sports networks around the country, with the ongoing bankruptcy case of Diamond Sports Group, and the shuttering of RSNs in several other markets. Most recently, the Chicago Sports Network was launched to broadcast Bulls games on local affiliates throughout Illinois ahead of the pending Sept. 30 closure of NBC Sports Chicago.

Moving non-exclusive games to KATU is a return to over-the-air television for the first time since the 1990s.

“We’ve put our fans first and started a new chapter, making it easier than ever to enjoy Trail Blazers basketball,” Dewayne Hankins, the team’s president of business operations, said in a statement.

Having the broadcast footprint will give the Blazers a wider reach than their previous cable homes. Portland is the country’s 25th largest DMA, with a base of 1,143,670 television households—this amounts to just under 1% (0.9%) of all TV households in the U.S. The DMA extends well beyond Portland proper and includes 22 counties in Oregon and another five in southwest Washington state.

Portland joins the Phoenix Suns, Utah Jazz, Dallas Mavericks and New Orleans Pelicans in moving games to local broadcast television. Phoenix, New Orleans and Dallas were formerly with DSG’s Bally Sports networks, while Utah shared the AT&T SportsNet/Root Sports umbrella with the Blazers until Warner Bros. Discovery chose to exit the RSN business at the end of 2023.

As of now, the Seattle Mariners are the only major league pro team on Root Sports Northwest, the network it owns outright after buying WBD’s shares. The Seattle Kraken left the network last spring for local TENGA affiliates, and to Prime Video for Washington and Oregon users.

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