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In forming their own TV network, the Kansas City Royals join a small group of sports teams intent on grabbing a bigger share of all-important television revenue.
"Even for a small-market team, there's a possibility for pretty good money from their own network," said Chris Isidore, who writes a sports business column for online publication CNN/Money.
Baseball's New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox have their own networks. Fox Sports Net went to court to prevent the Minnesota Twins from forming an all-sports network built around the baseball team's broadcasts.
Now the Royals, freed from a three-year agreement with Fox Sports Net, have formed Royals Television Network LLC, which on Dec. 11 landed its first customer in Time Warner Cable.
The five-year agreement with Time Warner ensures that 100 Royals regular-season games in the 2003 season can be seen in roughly 440,000 households throughout five states in the cable provider's network, said Mark Gorris, Royals senior vice president of business operations. The team will pitch its network to a list of other cable and satellite providers throughout a six-state area, he said.
Ideally, the new network...