{"id":613355,"date":"2026-03-08T13:51:51","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T13:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/613355\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T13:51:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T13:51:51","slug":"marquees-shortcomings-have-put-a-damper-on-cubs-spring-training-cubs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/613355\/","title":{"rendered":"Marquee’s Shortcomings Have Put A Damper On Cubs’ Spring Training – Cubs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAs of this writing, the Chicago Cubs have played 13 spring training games so far, including one exhibition against Team Italy in their tune up for the World Baseball Classic. We knew from the beginning of the year that Marquee Sports Network, whose main function is to show Cubs games and content, will not show most of the spring training games<\/a>. That Tribune article is behind a paywall, so here’s a Sports Illustrated\u00a0proxy<\/a>\u00a0that tells us which 11 games we expect to see on Marquee itself, whereas the rest you might have to hunt down an opponent’s feed with a VPN because of the Chicago-area blackout.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat’s even more galling is that of the broadcasts those of us who even have Marquee have seen, at least two of them have been just carrying the opposing team’s feed. I suppose there are contract details we aren’t privy to for on-air talent such as Boog Sciambi, Elise Menaker, and Taylor MacGregor. Plus, it isn’t like the Cubs and Marquee are the only ones not showing every single spring game, as there have been a handful where neither team has a feed and we’re just left to the literal devices of fans in attendance, or the social media intern if the team(s) could even bother to bring them along. For the remainder of the Cactus League slate before we get back to Wrigley for Opening Day, we can expect only six more Marquee broadcasts, and I just ran through the schedule and I see the following:\n<\/p>\n

\t\tFriday, March 6 – @ Padres, via SDPA, MLB Network, and free game broadcast on MLB.tv<\/p>\n

\t\tSunday, March 8 – vs Giants at Sloan, OMG it’s actually on Marquee and also MLB Network<\/p>\n

\t\tFriday, March 13 – @ White Sox, via CHSN<\/p>\n

\t\tSunday, March 15 – vs Dodgers at Sloan, via SNLA and Marquee<\/p>\n

\t\tMonday, March 16 – @ Guardians, via CLEG (I assume that’s Cleveland’s network)<\/p>\n

\t\tFriday, March 20 – split squad @ Athletics, via Marquee and NBC Sports CA (they’re not showing the split squad game at Sloan, which is frustrating)<\/p>\n

\t\tSaturday, March 21 – @ Mariners, via Marquee and the Mariners network<\/p>\n

\t\tSunday, March 22 – vs Brewers at Sloan, via Brewers, Marquee, and ESPN+<\/p>\n

\n\tAt least the first exhibition against the Yankees on Monday, March 23, will be broadcast on the radio, but then we get nothing until Opening Day. Noting that most of the remaining Marquee broadcasts are actually away games, I’d expect Marquee to be paying the rental fee just to carry the other team’s broadcast. The fact that the Cubs chose not to also pay for the three opponent broadcasts (bolded above) as well suggests some behind-the-scenes drama, which was alluded to by Crane Kenney’s comments in the Tribune article.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIf you checke on the Dodgers broadcast schedule, you’ll note that every game is on their channel, and though other big market clubs like the Yankees and Red Sox have scaled back their broadcast dates, they still seem to be showing way more than the Cubs are, and the Yankees even have a streaming app for most of the games that aren’t on YES. There are, again, most likely contract stipulations for any “extra” work done outside the regular season, but the Yankees streaming app (known as Gotham Sports App<\/a>, which combines content from YES and MSG) shows at least one alternative that Marquee could employ, especially since they have their own direct streaming app<\/a> now (which ironically shows a splash screen of spring training content, and I’m just like, “what content?”). It also isn’t like the Cubs situation is unique with a team-owned network, as Atlanta <\/a>and Detroit<\/a>\u00a0have both announced new launches of multimedia platforms beginning this season.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWith the Cubs, at least Marquee is established. Now, they just have to use it properly to bring us the content we fans demand and deserve. Whether it’s just paying a fee to use their opponent’s feed, or just putting a static camera that either is set up in the batter’s eye and focuses on home plate, or is set up from the press box and shows you the entire field, some content is better than no content. We can even see that the Cubs have such a camera set up as they were able to show Dansby Swanson’s home run against Team Italy at Sloan!\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIf Marquee really is having issues (financial or otherwise), this needs to become a priority in whatever restructure takes place. One hopes that as the Cubs navigate the new era of cord-cutting and further establish their in-market app while figuring out carriage issues, they find the resources to make this happen so we don’t complain about this same issue next spring, particularly when the Collective Bargaining Agreement is set to expire and we’ll be locked out of spring training anyway.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong other things Cubs roster-wise and spring training, we also lamented the lack of coverage by Marquee on the latest Dreamcast episode.\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As of this writing, the Chicago Cubs have played 13 spring training games so far, including one exhibition…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,138,24,4245,161,1897,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-613355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-cubs","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-cubs","11":"tag-chicagocubs","12":"tag-cubs","13":"tag-marquee-sports-network","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116193889079062075","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}