Well, it finally happened.
After nearly a full year of blackout headaches, streaming workarounds, and a Chicago-wide collective eye roll, Jerry Reinsdorf finally bit the bullet. That’s right — the Chicago Sports Network which launched on October 1, 2024 when Jerry Reinsdorf and Danny Wirtz teamed up to bring Blackhawks, Bulls, and White Sox games back to the local cable airwaves is finally available to Xfinity subscribers. That’s a sentence fans have been begging to hear for eight months.
This isn’t just a small deal. This is a long-overdue reality check for a team owner who seemed more interested in protecting his turf than actually letting fans watch his teams. And let’s not pretend it’s anything but that — Jerry was being cheap and stubborn. There’s no other way to put it.
Let’s rewind this for a second.
When NBC Sports Chicago (a.k.a. CSN) shut down on December 31, 2021, it marked the end of a broadcast era in Chicago. That network was the place fans had gone to watch Cubs, until Marquee Network was launched in 2020, Bulls, White Sox, and Blackhawks games for many years. It wasn’t perfect — far from it — but it was reliable. You flipped it on, and there were your teams. Simple.
After NBC Sports Chicago shut its doors, things got messy. Teams had to figure out new broadcast deals. The Cubs had already gone off on their own with Marquee Sports Network, but for Reinsdorf and his teams — the Bulls and White Sox — this became an opportunity to take the wheel.
Jerry being Jerry, he didn’t just want a new deal. He wanted his own network. A network he could control, package, and distribute how he saw fit. Enter: Chicago Sports Network.
CHSN launched with a lot of promise. October 1, 2024. A shiny new station. A slick black-and-red logo. A few press releases boasting about “innovative local coverage” and “fan-first content.” But one big problem: you couldn’t watch it on Xfinity.
Let that sink in.
Jerry Reinsdorf essentially launched a TV network for Chicago sports that wasn’t available on the biggest cable provider in Chicago.
That would be like launching a Chicago deep dish pizza chain and refusing to sell slices to people from the North Side. Or starting a blues club and banning guitars. What are we even doing here?
For eight months, Comcast subscribers were locked out. That’s millions of Chicagoans. Not everyone has DIRECTV or Fubo or whatever else was carrying CSN. And not everyone’s eager to sign up for a $20-a-month standalone app, especially when it’s being run by the same man who’s been nickel-and-diming Bulls and Sox fans for decades.
And that’s the real root of this. Trust. Or lack of it.
Reinsdorf’s reputation in Chicago sports circles — and many others — hasn’t exactly been golden over the years. The White Sox have been a mess, both on the field and in the front office. The Bulls are stuck in basketball limbo — not bad enough to tank, not good enough to contend. Fans are frustrated. They want transparency. They want vision. And instead, what they got was a man in his late 80s playing a game of financial chicken with a cable company while fans missed game after game.
It’s wild when you think about it. For months, Jerry dug in at his heels. He wanted more favorable terms from Comcast. Unfortunately, Comcast was as stubborn as any big corporation would denying Reinsdorf his wish. They weren’t going to pay inflated carriage fees just to carry a network that only shows Bulls and White Sox games — no matter how iconic both franchises are.
Meanwhile, fans suffered. Not the corporations. Not Reinsdorf. Fans.
Bars all over Chicago were suddenly out of luck. Want to watch the Bulls game on a Wednesday night? Sorry, they’re blacked out on League Pass and not available on Xfinity. Good luck finding a stream. And don’t even think about watching a Sox game unless you’ve got the right streaming bundle or know someone (or somewhere) with DirecTV.
It became a joke. One of the biggest media markets in the country. Two iconic franchises. And no reliable way to watch them unless you jumped through hoops.
And the timing made it worse. The Bulls are entering a transitional period, trying to figure out life after the Zach LaVine-Vucevic-DeRozan experiment. There are young players worth watching. Fans want to see how Coby White develops. What does the future hold for Patrick Williams? There’s intrigue — even if it’s buried under front office frustration.
The White Sox? Well, they’re a trainwreck, but they’re our trainwreck. Watching them implode is, in its own masochistic way, part of being a Sox fan in 2025. And they’ve got talent worth tracking. Watching Luis Robert Jr. swing a bat is still one of the prettier things in baseball. Garrett Crochet can strike out anyone when he’s locked in. Fans wanted to be part of the ride, good or bad.
But they couldn’t. Not without workarounds. Not without costs.
So when word finally broke that Reinsdorf and Comcast had come to terms, there was a collective sigh of relief — and a healthy dose of side-eye. Not celebration. Not praise. Just a tired, exasperated, “It’s about time.”
From what’s been reported, the deal is multi-year, and the terms were likely less than what Reinsdorf originally wanted. Because, in the end, time wore him down. You can’t run a regional sports network with no region watching. He needed eyeballs. He needed reach. And he needed Comcast.
There’s a kind of poetic irony to that. Reinsdorf once shared a network with Comcast — remember when it was Comcast SportsNet Chicago? He broke away to gain more control, more money, more brand presence. And eight months later, he’s crawling back, hat in hand.
Fans are smart. They see what happened here. This wasn’t some grand strategy. This wasn’t about creating a better fan experience. This was ego and economics colliding, and the only losers were the people who actually care about the teams.
Let’s be honest: Jerry was cheap and stubborn. There’s no getting around it. He could have struck this deal months ago. He could have made sure fans could watch opening night, or the first game of the White Sox season, or a pivotal Bulls matchup in February. But he didn’t. He held out, assuming Comcast would cave. They didn’t. And so, fans were caught in the crossfire of a billionaire’s bargaining.
Now, finally, the games are back on the biggest screen in Chicago. iPads are no longer required on the couch. No more calling your cousin in Evanston, or even another state, to get their streaming password. No more missing tip-off or first pitch because your Roku froze.
Here’s the thing, folks: The damage was done. Fans won’t forget this. They won’t forget being iced out for eight months. They won’t forget missing out on watching their teams for nearly an entire season’s worth of games. They won’t forget who was responsible — and it wasn’t Comcast.
With that… Here we are. The dust is settling. The channel is on. The games are playing. And Jerry Reinsdorf finally, finally, came to his senses. Or maybe — just maybe — he ran out of excuses.
This is one of the cases where I’d say: If you don’t work with them, don’t root for them either!