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Bally Sports Launches In Time For MLB Season
The Fox Sports all-sports stations are no more. As of March 31st, there’s a whole new Bally game when it comes to regional sports broadcasting and it’s one with a significant sports betting twist.
The 21 Fox Sports regional sports networks have all been rebranded as Bally Sports. There will be 20 sports stations in the Bally Sports Network. Fox Sports Tennessee and Fox Sports Carolinas were merged to create Bally Sports South.
Two other channels were also being christened with new names more closely aligned with their locations. Prime Ticket has become Bally Sports SoCal, and Sports Time Ohio is now Bally Sports Great Lakes.
For the most part, the change will be a simple one in terms of branding. Fox Sports Detroit is now Bally Sports Detroit. However, the way they deliver their broadcasts will be altered significantly. There will now be a heavy emphasis placed on the promotion of the Ballys brand of online sports betting services.
One of the changes that viewers will be immediately noticing with the Bally Sports brand is that the scorebug has been moved to a location at the bottom of the screen. Next to it will be a news scroll which will enable Bally to supply up to the minute sports betting information on that game and others in action and available for wagering.
Sinclair, owners of the Bally Sports stations, acknowledged that the providing of sports betting information to their viewing audience will be a driving force within the Bally Sports brand.
“We designed it that way with [betting] in mind, so that we could eventually insert propositions or betting lines or predictive gaming [elements] easily,” Bally Sports executive vice-president Michael Connelly explained to SportsVideo.org.
The Bally Bets Sports App also launched on March 31st, replacing the Fox Sports Go app. The Bally app, available for both Android and iOS devices, enables fans to place live bets while watching their favorite teams in action.
Over the past several months, Bally’s has acquired several casinos and now own 14 different brick and mortar casino properties across 10 states, all of which already are home to legal sports betting. This positions the company to launch the Bally Sports app in each of those locations once regulatory approval is granted.
Bally’s has already been approved for a temporary sports wagering permit for the state of Virginia from the Virginia Lottery.