#ALTITUDE SPORTS TV#

By the end of the year, Kroenke would add the Colorado Rapids and Colorado Mammoth to his growing sports empire.

#ALTITUDE SPORTS TV#

September 4, 2004: Kroenke launches the Altitude Sports network as a TV home for Avs and Nuggets games, broadcasting games to local viewers and nine other neighboring states and forging a direct competitor to the FSN Rocky Mountain regional sports channel (now known as AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain). The seller, Charlie Lyons of Ascent Entertainment Group Inc., had been responsible for developing and financing the shared arena and moving the Avalanche to Denver from Quebec. Ahead of the postseason and the companies’ next settlement meeting in June, we put together a refresher on the dispute.Īpril 2000: American businessman and billionaire Stan Kroenke, the founder and namesake of KSE, becomes the sole owner of the Avalanche and Nuggets, buying the teams and Ball Arena (formerly the Pepsi Center) for roughly $450 million. So even though the Nuggets take on the Golden State Warriors April 16 in the first round of the NBA playoffs, and the Avs are on the brink of clinching the NHL’s Central Division ahead of their playoffs in May, fans wanting to watch the respective playoff runs on TV shouldn’t get their hopes up. Though the companies are set to remain in discussions over the coming months, a resolution to the nearly three-year dispute still seems up in the air. And the Nuggets, despite their success (not to mention having the reigning league MVP on their team), are on pace to have the lowest local TV rating in the NBA in at least the past 15 years. Negotiations to strike new contracts have since soured and led to a drawn-out antitrust lawsuit between Altitude and Comcast, leaving thousands of fans with TV blackouts for the third season in a row.

But in August 2019, DISH Network dropped Altitude upon the expiration of their 15-year contracts, and nearly every other major cable subscription service followed suit-including Comcast, Colorado’s largest provider. Since the Altitude Sports channel launched in 2004, fans with subscriptions to major cable providers could tune in to watch their teams with no issues for years.

The reason? Ongoing local TV blackouts for the teams, thanks to a years-long battle between statewide cable providers and Altitude Sports and Entertainment-the regional sports network operated by Kroenke Sports and Entertainment (KSE), the company that owns the Colorado Avalanche, Denver Nuggets, and several other sports franchises around Colorado. While Denver sports fans inside Ball Arena have spent the season watching Mikko Rantanen rack up points for the Colorado Avalanche and Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokić throw down triple-doubles seemingly every night, many fans at home have been left in the dark-literally. The Local newsletter is your free, daily guide to life in Colorado.

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