Hulu drops Cubs’ Marquee Sports Network

The Cubs’ Marquee Sports Network won’t be seen on Hulu + Live TV starting Friday. The streaming service announced Thursday that it was unable to reach a carriage agreement with Sinclair Broadcast Group, which jointly owns Marquee with the Cubs, to show the network and Sinclair’s other regional sports networks on its Live TV plans.

Sinclair’s RSNs have been dropped by streaming services fuboTV, YouTube TV and Sling in the last year. The only streaming service that carries Marquee is AT&T TV Now.

“This is certainly disappointing for fans in the Chicago area who subscribed to Hulu given the highly touted sports-first service,” Cubs spokesperson Julian Green said. “We encourage subscribers to go to www.getmyhometeams.com for a list of what providers offer Marquee Sports Network and your favorite regional programming.”

The Marquee Sports-Hulu relationship lasted about eight months, and it got off to a rocky start after it was announced on Feb. 17. The network said at the time that Hulu + Live TV subscribers would have access to the Cubs’ first spring-training game on Feb. 22, but Hulu said the day before the game that it wouldn’t carry Marquee Sports until the start of the MLB regular season.