After the prolific 2010’s decade, the 2020’s started with a world-wide global health crisis and pandemic, the COVID-19 coronavirus. In unprecedented government actions, businesses were forced to close as workforces transitioned to work-from-home; the public mandated to wear face masks, shelter in place and socially distance; professional sports were suspended; and advertising experienced declines not seen since the Great Recession. At the same time, workers were voluntarily resigning from their jobs en masse, a phenomenon known as the Great Resignation. The effects of the pandemic on the world’s economies and supply chain, the Great Resignation on the labor markets, and Russia’s attack on Ukraine on world-wide oil and grain supplies, led to some of the highest inflation in 40 years and the country’s next recession.
The period also saw the deployment of ATSC 3.0 (now known as NextGen Broadcast). David Smith’s vision from the late 1990’s for the mobility of the television signal was finally realized. NextGen TV enables broadcasters to significantly expand the data and content transmitted on the existing spectrum, provide mobility of the television signal, offer targeted content, broadcast in high-quality video and immersive sound, converge over-the-air and over-the-top technologies, and allow for meaningful opportunities for data delivery as a service applications. As the driving force behind the groundbreaking new technology, we continue to advance the acceptance and implementation of the technology worldwide.
The year will be remembered for the global COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic which disrupted businesses and personal lives. Unlike the Great Recession’s financial crisis, the pandemic was a health crisis that put the economy into recession, shuttering small and medium-sized businesses. It was also a year of civil unrest. The fragile state of the country resulted in record levels of political advertising revenues, which helped to offset significantly lower advertising revenues due to the pandemic.
Despite this turmoil, we continued on our path to be a leading diversified media company. Tennis Channel was already broadcasting major tennis events from around the world such as Wimbledon, the US Open, the Australian Open and Roland Garros (French Open). In 2020 it expanded its distribution internationally with the launch of subscription and FAST (free ad supported) channels in Austria, Switzerland and Germany.
As the year ended, we entered into a long-term naming partnership for our RSNs with Bally’s Corp. The RSNs were now known as Bally’s Sports.
Continuing our focus on our core business and local news, we launched The National Desk (TND), a revolutionary model that takes important and relevant stories from our local newscasts across the country and packages them into a national news broadcast.
As a result of several MVPDs dropping carriage of the RSNs, the RSNs’ entered into new financing and other terms to raise liquidity for the longer term and to launch Bally Sports+, the RSNs Direct-to-Consumer subscription offering. Under the refinancing terms, an independent Board and separate management team was created to oversee and make Bally Sports decisions. As a result of the change in control, the RSNs were deconsolidated from Sinclair’s financial statements effective March 1, 2022.
This same year, Tennis Channel launched T2, connected TV FAST channels, and continued their growth in international distribution. ATSC 3.0 was now deployed in over 50% of the country, and we entered into the first live business use case to deliver data to electric vehicle charging stations.
On June 1, 2023, Sinclair completed a shareholder-approved share exchange and holding company reorganization in which a new entity, Sinclair, Inc. (NASDAQ: SBGI), became the publicly-traded parent company of Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBG). The new structure provided greater flexibility for creating value within the company, simplified and improved the transparency of financial disclosures on the value drivers of the company, unlocked unrecognized value and provided structural flexibility for the growth and monetization of our current and potential future media and non-media businesses. It also meant that SBG could become a broadcast-focused subsidiary while its sister entity, Sinclair Ventures, could focus on non-media assets.
During 2023, we generated $234 million in adjusted free cash flow, and directly returned $218 million of that to our shareholders via cash dividends and share repurchases during the year, representing a 93% payout ratio.
Tennis Channel introduced a direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming service that merged its flagship 24-hour network with extensive live and on-demand multicourt coverage, offering fans unparalleled access to the sport. At the same time, Tennis Channel established its first Europe-based team to expand coverage in Germany and throughout the continent.
During the fall, we launched three national sports podcasts, “The Triple Option,” with Urban Meyer, Mark Ingram II, and Rob Stone, “Throwbacks” with Matt Leinart and Jerry Ferrara, and “Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard” to great success, with each consistently ranking at the top of the sports podcast charts. Plans are underway to add additional high-profile podcasts in 2025.
The year began with the equity ownership of Diamond Sports regional sports networks ending in early-January. Later in January, Sinclair and three other major U.S. broadcasters announced EdgeBeam, a joint venture that uses broadcaster’s spectrum to launch a nation-wide datacasting platform, thereby creating new and incremental business models for the broadcast industry.