What to know about subscriptions for Kiswe's live-stream role in Phoenix Suns new TV deal

Mike Schabel has a personal investment in the Phoenix Suns partnering up with Gray Television and Kiswe to provide free viewing of games starting this upcoming 2023-24 season.

Kiswe’s chief strategy officer was born in Phoenix, raised in Glendale and earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Arizona in 1995.

“This is my hometown team,” he said.

Schabel spoke Wednesday via Zoom with The Arizona Republic to discuss details of the deal, why it’s groundbreaking and when this partnership was first discussed.

“Why it’s groundbreaking? It says, ‘You know what, let’s take a different approach,’” he said. “What Gray did. A ton of credit to Gray and Arizona's Family (Ch. 3 and 5 in Phoenix). That team is just really something else. They said, ‘You know what, we’re going to put it over-the-air broadcast. Anybody with rabbit ears can get this and we’re going to put it on our local channels.’ It’s no longer in the premium. It’s in the basic package. If you’ve got cable and satellite, you can watch it. If you have Dish, you can watch it. It’s no longer in the premium and if you are a cord cutter and you don’t have rabbit ears, on your phone you can watch it, too.”

Before diving into the Q&A, here are some quick tidbits.

Contract: The Suns have a deal up to five years with Gray Television and Kiswe while the Mercury are on a two-year deal with both.

Connect TV and Smart TV experience: Those who have Roku or a Fire TV Stick can download the app and be able to watch Suns games from there.

Right now: Phoenix Mercury games are available for free streaming on the mobile app or team website. Fans can click schedule and hit “Watch Live” to see games live and can watch one again within 24 hours after ending.

Subscription: Fans will follow the same process to watch the Suns, but they will have to pay a subscription to live-stream. Options being discussed are monthly subscriptions and season-long subscriptions, but nothing is final. The fees will be announced before the Suns play preseason games for the 2023-24 season.

“This is going to be well priced for the Arizona audience to be able to watch this,” Schabel said. “Our goal and (new Suns team owner Mat Ishbia’s) goal is to make sure this is accessible for everybody. If you’re a fan, this is going to be within reach.”

Availability: Fans won’t be able to stream games on Kiswe that are shown nationally on TNT or ESPN. Preseason games, locally broadcast games in the regular season and the first round of the postseason will be available for streaming on Kiswe. The remaining playoff coverage will be national, therefore not available to view through Kiswe.

“The way that works out is there are a finite number of games out of the 82 (in the regular season) that are exclusive on ESPN or Turner," Schabel said. "The rest might be side by side. Anytime it’s on Gray/Arizona Family, it’s also available here, one-to-one.”

Features: There will be chatrooms that will be moderated and consistent with the community guidelines, meaning no profanity or verbally abusive language. Fans can post videos on fan walls and show say their jerseys and purchase team gear. There could possibly be multi-camera views as the season progresses.

In espanol: The Suns are looking to have the game streams provided in Spanish.

“We’re going to be thinking really hard about all the ways we can support the fans,” Schabel said. “We’ll figure it out. We’re going to experiment, too. We’re going to listen to the fans. They may say this fan wall thing, they don’t like it. They don’t like. They’re not going to react to it. That’s not a problem.”

Is Kiswe’s deal separate from Gray Television’s or is this a collaboration with the Suns?

“One big deal. It was like a huge marriage. We got the whole party together. While there are separate obligations that Gray has, especially as it pertains to distribution on Arizona's Family and what Kiswe has, in respect to the direct-to-consumer (DTC), look, at the end of the day, we joined up as partners to serve the needs of the Suns and their fans and the Mercury. It was just easier to do it all together.”

How did the conversation start that led to this historic deal? Did Ishbia call, you guys call him?

“This has been a long conversation. It started almost a year ago. It was prior to Mat (Ishbia, team owner) getting started, but boy, he was juiced. It was awesome fuel to the fire. No. 1, the rights were up with renewal with the Phoenix Suns and their former network (Bally Sports Arizona). So there was an opportunity under certain conditions for new entrants to come in and say we would like to participate in this. Those discussions had been happening for a very long time given what we all understood were the rights of the team to have those conversations.”

Ishbia officially became the team owner in February.

“Mat bought the team and I think Mat really leaned in and said his vision was to make sure that every fan in Arizona has a way to watch. I think it was really reinforcing the fact that he was going to be a leader in the industry change because what exists today is that you can watch if you’re a cable customer or a satellite customer, except for Dish, and that just leaves too many fans on the side. They’ve cut the cord, they are ‘cord nevers’ and they can’t watch. He’s going to make sure that this team is accessible to the entire state of Arizona. That’s bold. That’s hard to do. It takes guts and I’ve got to give him credit.”

Why is this a groundbreaking partnership?

“We’ve moved from a mobile for a variety of reasons, the Suns, and teams all over the country, are supported by dedicated focus networks that exist, linear TV networks that are predominately on that content. Those end up being part of premium packages in your cable package and satellite package. You think about all the households in Arizona. Some fraction of them, a meaningful fraction of them don’t have cable or satellite. Of the people that have cable and satellite, not all those cable and satellite carriers have the network. Dish doesn’t have it. So now you’re down to a smaller number of households and then not everybody has bought that premium package. Now you’re squeezed to this number of people who have the right cable company or satellite company who have paid the premium amount of money for that network in order to watch that content. So your audience size is impacted by the people who are paying all those premiums. Why is this groundbreaking? If I cut the cord or I’m a ‘cord never’ and a lot of people are ‘cord nevers’ they can’t watch the game. If you’re a Suns fan and you can’t watch the game in Arizona, your local team, that’s a bummer.”

Ishbia has projected that nearly 3 million fans will be reached to view Suns and Mercury games.

“Instead of it being accessible to a comparably small number of people, it is now accessible to everybody. Whether you’ve got a TV with rabbit ears or you’ve got a 5G phone or whatever it is, you have an opportunity to be a fan of the Suns and Mercury. That’s why it’s groundbreaking because it’s making sports accessible. Sports, I think, has become more and more, for a variety of reasons, exclusive. Like so exclusive that it almost doesn’t allow fans to be fans. This brings it back to the core value. If you think about all the stuff that goes on in our society, there’s nothing better than sports to unify. It brings us together. Even if we’re competing on the court, it brings everybody together. That’s just awesome for society and I think it’s with that vision, that’s why it’s a breakthrough. It brings us back together.”

Have opinion about current state of the Suns? Reach Suns Insider Duane Rankin at dmrankin@gannett.com or contact him at 480-787-1240. Follow him on Twitter at @DuaneRankin.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kiswe's live-streaming role in new Phoenix Suns, Mercury television deal