Originally operating as a subfeed of Fox Sports Rocky Mountain, then Fox Sports Midwest in 1998, the network formally announced that it would spin-off Fox Sports Kansas City as a separate channel on January 24, 2008 after Fox Sports Midwest signed an exclusive long-term broadcast agreement with the Kansas City Royals. The agreement was struck following the dissolution of the Royals Sports Television Network, a regional network formed in 2003 to broadcast games and analysis programs for the Major League Baseball franchise, which distributed its event telecasts to broadcast and cable affiliates throughout the Midwestern and South Central United States. Specifically, Fox Sports Kansas City was created to avoid scheduling conflicts with coverage of St. Louis Cardinals games televised by Fox Sports Midwest. On December 14, 2017, as part of a merger between both companies, The Walt Disney Company announced plans to acquire all 22 regional Fox Sports networks from 21st Century Fox, including Fox Sports Kansas City. However, on June 27, 2018, the Justice Department ordered their divestment under antitrust grounds, citing Disney's ownership of ESPN. On May 3, 2019, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Entertainment Studios bought Fox Sports Networks from The Walt Disney Company for $10.6 billion. The deal closed on August 22, 2019.
Programming
Fox Sports Kansas City holds the exclusive regional cable television rights to the Kansas City Royals, and produces the Major League Baseball team's pre-game and post-game show Royals Live and the weekly magazine program Royals Insider. Starting with the 2017 season, the channel holds the exclusive regional television rights to Sporting Kansas City broadcasts.. Because there can be Royals and SKC programming at the same time, Fox Sports Kansas City is provided to cable operators as two separate channels, which normally carry identical programming. During the college football season, the channel broadcasts Kansas Jayhawks and Kansas State Wildcats games in different time slots to avoid scheduling conflicts; the channel also broadcasts Kansas State Wildcats basketball and volleyball and baseball from the Wildcats and Kansas Jayhawks. The channel also carries select events televised by Fox Sports Midwest including games from the St. Louis Blues ; basketball, volleyball, baseball and wrestling events from the Missouri Tigers, with the university's college football games televised on an alternate feed. Other sports programming on the network includes Big 12 Conference regular season women's basketball and baseball games, and championship matches from both conference-sanctioned sports; regular season and championship basketball games from the Missouri Valley Conference; college coaches' shows; football and basketball championships from the Missouri State High School Activities Association; and NBA games from the Oklahoma City Thunder televised by Fox Sports Oklahoma. Fox Sports Kansas City HD is a high definition simulcast feed of Fox Sports Kansas City, which broadcasts in the 720p format. HD content broadcast on the feed including the channel's entire slate of Royals game telecasts, as well as game telecasts and other programming distributed national by Fox Sports Networks.
