Eight-plus months after launching, Chicago Sports Network will finally reach a wider Chicago-area audience.

Chicago Sports Network (CHSN), a TV channel that is a partnership between the Chicago Blackhawks, Bulls and White Sox, announced a carriage contract on Friday after a deal was finalized late Thursday night, according to a Comcast spokesperson. CHSN will be available within Comcast’s Ultimate TV package, its highest tier, on Channel 200 in the Chicago area. The channel went live on Friday morning.

“On behalf of the entire CHSN team, we’re proud to welcome Comcast’s Xfinity TV customers to a network built exclusively for Chicago sports fans,” CHSN president Jason Coyle said in a statement. “With more than 300 live Bulls, Blackhawks, and White Sox games each year, along with original programming that highlights Chicago’s pro, college, and high school sports, CHSN delivers the most comprehensive and locally focused coverage available. This deal allows us to reach even more fans across the city and suburbs, deepen connections, and reinforce CHSN as the home for Chicago sports all day, every day.”

When CHSN launched in October 2024, Chicago’s big three pro teams hoped Comcast could continue to feature them just as it had for NBC Sports Chicago, the network the teams left to launch CHSN in October 2024. The teams hoped CHSN would be able to remain on Comcast’s more readily available middle tier, just as NBC Sports Chicago had been. Instead, Comcast didn’t carry CHSN at all.

“Today’s announcement that Chicago Sports Network will now be available on Comcast marks the realization of the original vision for our games reaching to the widest audience possible,” Blackhawks chairman and CEO Danny Wirtz said Friday. “Blackhawks fans have been incredibly patient over the past year as CHSN has worked to create widespread availability of our games, and I couldn’t be more excited for what this means for them. This agreement puts us back in the homes of many Chicagoans who have been missing our coverage, ensuring sports fans across the city are able to enjoy exciting Blackhawks hockey as well as all the programming we have planned for our Centennial celebration next season.”

CHSN has been available on DirecTV and Fubo and through a direct-to-consumer streaming app. But without carriage on Comcast, the teams’ overall viewership plummeted from previous years. Sports Business Journal reported in February that the Bulls lost 63 percent of their viewership from the previous year. Wirtz confirmed a report in April that the Blackhawks were down 78 percent, or 40,000 homes, from the previous year.

Upon launch, CHSN was available to watch for free over the air via antenna in the Chicago area and other regional markets. Now that there’s a Comcast deal in place, the channel will no longer be available over the air in these markets, leaving fans with no free method to watch:

• Chicago, Champaign, Springfield, Peoria, Rockford and Quincy in Illinois
• South Bend and Fort Wayne in Indiana
• Davenport, Iowa

The channel is still available over the air in these markets:

• Indianapolis
• Milwaukee
• Grand Rapids, Mich.
• Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Sioux City in Iowa
• Paducah (Ky.), Cape Girardeau (Mo.), Harrisburg (Ill.)

“At the end of the day, the availability of our games on TV this past season was unacceptable — and our fans deserve better,” Wirtz told The Athletic in April. “I am focused on finding potential solutions for next season with our partners at CHSN. We are about to celebrate 100 years of hockey as well as usher in the next generation on the ice. I am committed to ensuring our fans can see that.”

The most obvious solution was always Comcast, but it was unclear whether there was an actual path to a deal. There had been whispers of a possible agreement in late December, which Bulls president Michael Reinsdorf acknowledged in April, but that fell apart.

Wirtz remained hopeful in March, but he was uncertain about the timing.

“I wish I could (have a timeline), and I’ve been hopeful before,” Wirtz said. “But we hope that we have the right pieces to put something together. Unfortunately, as you know in the media world, we are Chicago, and our teams are not the only piece to the puzzle of national media relationships and markets and things. We are, unfortunately, caught in the timing of all those other things that are less about our specific deal and more about how these deals come online across markets across the U.S.”

Comcast carriage, especially on its highest tier, won’t return all of the teams’ viewership from the past, but it should significantly help. Comcast has been moving a majority of its regional sports networks to its highest tier over the past year.

(Photo by Jon Greenberg / The Athletic)