December 19: Evan Drellich of the Athletic reports that Diamond has streaming rights for five of the MLB teams whose broadcasting deals it covers: Detroit, Kansas City, Miami, Milwaukee and Tampa Bay. Even if an agreement between Amazon and Diamond is reached with regards to streaming, they would need to negotiate additional deals with MLB if they want to stream games for any of the other six clubs.
December 18: One of MLB’s bigger off-field stories of the past year has been the bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group. The conglomerate’s struggles to meet its broadcasting deals has left teams contracted with Diamond — which operates the Bally Sports regional networks — in uncertain positions about the revenues they can expect from their local television contracts. That has been reflected in a few clubs (e.g. Padres, Rangers, Twins) cutting or plateauing spending.
As Diamond’s bankruptcy process continues, Lauren Thomas and Joe Flint of the Wall Street Journal report that the corporation is engaged with Amazon about a potential multi-year streaming agreement. The discussions, which are not complete and would need to be approved by the bankruptcy court even if Diamond and Amazon reach an agreement, would see Amazon invest in Diamond with a goal of eventually acquiring streaming rights for teams on those broadcasts. Diamond would continue to operate its cable networks.
There has been a general expectation that Diamond’s reorganization will see the business abandon all of its broadcasting deals with MLB after the 2024 season. Evan Drellich of the Athletic wrote last week that Diamond and MLB were nearing agreement on a deal that would at least provide clarity on how which of its 11 contracts* it would honor for the ’24 campaign. The Athletic reported last month that the company was considering dropping its contracts with the Rangers and Guardians before next season.
Even if Diamond meets most or all of its obligations for next season, those clubs won’t have clarity on how things will play out in 2025 and beyond. The potential for Amazon to support the company in exchange for streaming opportunities offers some optimism, but it remains very early in that process.
* The Angels, Braves, Brewers, Cardinals, Guardians, Marlins, Rangers, Rays, Reds, Royals and Tigers have existing contracts with Diamond. The company abandoned deals with the Padres and Diamondbacks during the 2023 season, while its contract with the Twins expired at the end of the year.
Short Amazon stock now?
Following their track, I’d say no.
Get something done and let everyone watch.
Careful what you wish for. I’m sure when all these streaming deals are done, sports viewing is gonna be more of a carte a blanche experience. Sadly I predict a future where we’ll be purchasing a streaming package or it ll b a few bucks or whatever depending on game to stream single games.
It mind sound foolish right now, but 10-15 years ago how many people would’ve ever believed they’d be paying as many different viewing source as they are right now to stream different content.
In Detroit, its $20 per month to stream Tigers games thru Bally.
I have a job and a family, my time for watching baseball is very limited. I’d love to be able to purchase one game for a few bucks.
A San Francisco Giants fan. 1987, something called Giants Vision on cable tv offered the opportunity to purchase turning on a television game. Was $7.99 each game. That was before regional sports networks. Not certain what the cost would be 35+ years later.
Me and you will be dead by then
Maybe they need some Saudi money, it worked out for the PGA.
I look Saudi but don’t have money
And still saving 50% over cable
Meanwhile, the Commissioner Rob Manfred is asleep in acting in the best interests in baseball in protecting the Cleveland Indians….yeah Rob, they’re still called the Cleveland Indians by loyal Tribe fans.
Cutting off the 60 million a year for next 7 years to padres all of sudden was a big blow financially hope they can get a better deal going now . Thanks DSG and MLB
They are still making money from the broadcasts I just don’t know how much.
No one service will ever get the viewers that cable had. They won’t get back the amounts that once were, as many who cut the cord, won’t be going back to pay services.
Maury Brown of The Business of Baseball said that it appears that the Padres increased TV revenue from the $52 million DSG was scheduled to pay them. He pointed to the fact that the day after DSG officially defaulted the Padres had deals in place with all the cable, satellite, and streaming services they were on before and increased their potential TV households by 2 million.
They also were the 1st team to be able to sell local MLB.tv packages. Brown said that they sold more than 250,000 of those accounts. Others have said 285,000. Brown said that MLB is giving the teams 80% of the revenue from those accounts. Arizona was the 2nd team.
At the Winter Meetings Scott Boras echoed much of same things in saying the Padres had not lost any TV revenue in 2023 and had no financial limitations from it going forward.
Major League Baseball has a pretty significant exposure issue here. The league needs to figure this out and get its games more widely broadcast and easily accessible.
Even before Bally’s went belly up, a lot of those fans in those markets were squeezed out from watching their hometown teams because of exorbitant carriage fees. Now, it’s obviously even worse.
But the league can’t have large segments of its potential fan base unable to watch its product. Sports viewing, like most other forms of entertainment, is about habits. And once you stop watching something, it’s pretty easy and doesn’t take long to find alternative ways to spend that time.
You can say that again. I stopped watching the NFL in 2016 and I’ve loved every second of my extra time. If anything, it’s made me love baseball even more.
I gave up on football around that time too. Got tired of watching people try to hurt each other and that commissioner is scum.
Man, to think, if you were still watching…the NFL would have all time record ratings plus one.
Who is number 66 ?
Since the chargers left San Diego I quit watch the NFL. Stuck with baseball only and it’s the best sport in my eyes.
The way it’s set up now I don’t have cable and watch thru the mlb.tv app. I can watch all the games except my home team, which makes me less interested in the Rox and less likely to go to the games in person. Why disincentive home rooting interest, it’s not gonna make me pay for cable.
I can watch all the games except my home team,
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Same here. I have very nice computer screen and that’s how I watch. Coming from NY, I don’t get the Yankees, but as a RS fan, I could care less.
But I never once thought about buying Yankee tickets because of getting blacked out. I’m not sure anyone does. It is an entirely different experience.
Hopefully Amazon ends the draconian local blackouts. It doesn’t effect me as I sub to YES for the NYY but it’ll be good for all fans.
End blackouts, force everyone to get Amazon Prime and then they raise rates. Before you know it Prime will be over $200 a year.
Personally, for what they charge now, I find is good value. I get groceries once a week through them along with their other services. It saves me at least six hours per month not having to go on shopping trips.
They’ll have it as an add on.
Same here. I either walk down to the hardware store, or order on-line. And it is as much for the variety available as it is the savings.
Well said, Youngblood. People will find other things to do. I used to know the NHL inside & out, now I’ve totally lost interest in watching hockey on TV. It happens.
Yep I started to do drawing again and working on cars instead.
Yuck
The final flailing of a culturally irrelevant dying sport.
Hahaha wow, what an absolutely ridiculous comment
See who’s laughing when mlb goes defunct within the decade. To paraphrase Jason from ‘The GodFather’: “wont be seeing them no more”
Absolutely delusional lol
If the system doesn’t change, you will see small market teams go by the wayside until you are left with a dozen teams or less in 20 years or so.
When the average baseball fan of 50 plus start dying off, the sport will probably go with it mostly.
Meanwhile, Robby the robot keeps insisting there is nothing to see here as his large market masters instruct him.
I have some serious idle money that says that the MLB goes to 32 teams before they go to 28.
Wut. Have you been to a game lately? Loads of families and kids…
Some times I feel like quitting baseball too expensive. And the same teams have to win in sports or else.
So irrelevant that you post on here multiple times per day about it. Clown
I’m sure you an NBA fan ..just love watching that garbage
MLB should consolidate everything into their app. Everything is spread too thin across streaming as it is.
Meaning game broadcasts?
MLB should consolidate everything into their app.
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While not having a clue as to what that would look like, I like the sound of it. The NFL seems to do a great job maximizing its exposure.
That’s the league to emulate. While the NBA gets a lot of cable revenue, people are dropping those packages more than ever.
The blackouts are inexcusable, and so is the Manfred man. There should never be a run that is neither earned, not caused by an error, yet that exists now. It’s a statistical mess now.
Manfred Mann?
And the Earth Band
I was going to put my two cents in but we’re already up to a buck fifty…..
FFS MLB just reclaim all the rights and stream it to us direct
shutupandtakemymoney.jpg
Why don’t they just tell Bally’s to go kick rocks and put all those teams on the MLB app? Bally’s picking and choosing what deals they can still make a profit on and just skipping out on the other teams is BS.
The right answer for all these sports leagues is to quit letting bloodsucking, money hungry networks, cable companies, streamers etc into the equation at all.
Imagine selling the Super Bowl as a streaming pay per view right on the NFL app, and then the league keeping all the ad revenue for themselves.
But you wouldn’t be able to watch the superbowl on a tv if its streamed or on an app- you could only watch it on a phone then and that would take alot of the fun out of watching it
You clearly lack even a basic understanding of how streaming works. Every TV made in the last decade is capable of streaming.
Imagine a superbowl party with 10 people all hovering over someones tiny phone screen
I’m guessing you haven’t heard of chromecast? It’s quite easy to put content from your phone onto a TV. I currently don’t have an opinion on the whole streaming situation, but using that as an excuse not to use the app shows a glaring lack of knowledge.
iphone, too.
Imagine a person posting here that they don’t understand what an Apple TV is or a smart TV, or Google Chromecast, or a Fire TV stick
They have a contract MLB has to honor. Unless MLB declares bankruptcy, they can’t pull out of deals like Bally. Even they need court approval to do so.
They call it the NFL network, while the Super Bowl is still over the air on free TV the typical cable TV consumer is paying 75 cents a month of their cable bill to the NFL. So that may not be much but programming in May and June isn’t good but it’s the cost of doing business. If you don’t have the channel did you watch the 3 games on Saturday? Granted you may have not cared about any of the 6 teams. But until we turn the conversation to oppressors and oppresses nothing it seems to get done.
The 75 cents a month is all fine and good, but what if I told you there are 72,000,000 cable subscribers today and that just 7 years ago there were 100,000,000.
I guarantee you that the first professional sports league (or college football) to go entirely on their own app/ streaming service is going to be a game changer. You can use the NFL Sunday ticket as a rough barometer but because it isn’t the exclusive way to access the content the subscriber count doesn’t tell the whole story.
People are willing to pay $200 for the entire season of the NFL, how much of that $$$ should the NFL want? All of it
Advertisers pay for ad time on cable/ Youtube during NFL games. How much of that revenue should the NFL want? All of it.
The options to let people pay for just their team or all games, include playoffs in your plan or buy them a la carte, are we charging for the world series/ super bowl? Will people pay more to skip commercials? The options are endless and can be reworked year after year without negotiating with some TV network or other service that needs to get paid.
I prefer to listen to games on the radio. I can focus on other things, while still keeping up with my team. Plus I find the radio announcers not as annoying as TV announcers.
Agreed, Big. Baseball on the radio is the best approach. Too many former players as TV “broadcasters” that simply have no feel for the job. I miss Vin Scully & professional broadcasting standards.
I can do that. I got hooked sneaking a radio into bed with me to listen to some of the late games as a kid.
And this is the 2nd time in a week that I agree with Parks. Too many TV announcers have no feel for the game flow.
The biggest detriment to baseball and the thing keeping it from reaching out and making new fans and growing the sport is the mere fact people cannot watch their local teams. MLB has the worst promotion and it’s why they are the number 3 sport right now in populatary in the US.
Mlb needs to let people watch their games but these teams are so greedy and so scared that these local media blackout rules are killing the sport more than anything even PEDs.
Youtube TV completely ditched the MLB Network last year and there’s no sign they have any intention of bringing it back. This is yet another instance of mismanagement by MLB.
The availability of the MLB channel was one of the deciding factors when I selected Fubo after cutting the cord earlier this year.
After I made the Fubo selection, I discovered that they tack a $13 per month surcharge on there for BSSW, the RSN that carries the Rangers.
I ditched Direct TV after the baseball season. I saw that Fubo and Direct TV stream, ironically were pretty much the only streaming alternatives for baseball as MLB TV blacks out the Reds games here.
They ditched it because they bought the multi-billion NFL Sunday Ticket package. They had a choice to drop it and many other channels or raise prices to the same price as DIRECTV who had NFL Sunday Ticket before.
“Thank God I don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars to watch every thing I want in one convenient place anymore!”
“Now, I get to pay hundreds of dollars to a dozen or so companies to piecemeal watch what I want without being able to easily switch back and forth between them! The FUTURE!!!!”
This would work out for me as the wife has Amazon Prime anyway. Just another add on like Paramount +, Max, etc. probably.
It would be great for major league baseball to be streamed, as that is the way everything is going. Late to the party as usual, but glad they are finally getting there.
Maybe im wrong but I believe diamond doesn’t even own the streaming rights for these teams.
I could see Amazon getting a deal done but after diamond is dead. They could swoop in and gather up all the streaming rights negotiating with teams individually. Then again maybe they want to do a deal with diamond so Amazon doesn’t have to broadcast the games themselves.
They’re not late. They like to prowl and pounce on distressed assets.
With the new Nascar contract recently announced, 5 races in the middle of the summer will be available only on Amazon Prime Video, beginningi in 2025. If my Rangers also wind up on Amazon Prime Video, then it appears that I am going to be forced into being a customer of Amazon.
Or just sail the seven seas
My pure guess is that we have so many disjointed options is because the MLB saw that a lot of companies wanted to get into the game, and didn’t mind overpaying. Maybe after the industry consolidates a bit more, maybe they will chop it up more narrowly like the NFL.
Just get MLB network and run it through a VPN. All the home games you can handle 🙂
That used to work several years ago. Now, they use the gps location on your phone.
If you find a VPN that works, please let us know.
Mlb.tv is based on the billing address of your payment.
VPN won’t help.
I do it all the time, on a PC
Makes you wonder why the Cardinals can’t sign quality people. Those that bring fans to the stands. This is a different era now. Fans will stay away.
More paywalls. Yay!
Great so we can be forced to watch baseball on 5 different streaming services, which will result in people just watching less baseball.
Pirates should have been in on this. I was saying this for a year and again, Nutting blows a potential money grab.
Why would Amazon need to invest in a losing company, why don’t they just step in and take over the MLB contracts and get the rest while they’re at it. MLB really made a mess of this year’s ago by not bringing all the teams under one broadcasting umbrella
How would they have done that? How could they do that now?
I do agree they made a mess of this by doing a deal with the devil here, meaning Diamond/Sinclair.
Every other sport does it and spilts the proceeds evenly thtough revenue sharing.
Of course, other sports have a salary cap too and the large markets don’t run the whole show.
Streaming rights for ONE season. Then those rights revert to the teams.
They just need to get rid of Blackout restrictions. It’s absolutely ridiculous that mlb charges $150 for mlb.tv but it still has blackouts. For example. I’m in Las Vegas. All west coast teams are blacked out. If any I should be getting west coast teams. It’s very Annnying trying to find another streaming site that allows me to watch cubs games when they play west coast teams.
They can’t until all the RSN’s are gone.
…or until the local teams negotiate deals with RSN’s that aren’t locked into cable deals. They’re slowly heading that way, but not in the manner they hoped.
What’s an RSN? Regional Sports Network?
Yes. RSN is regional sports network
I hope Amazon improves their platform. This past season, after You Tube didn’t carry MLB, I bought the baseball package through Amazon. It was the worst experience i’v ever had with watching sports in my life. When you record a game, you couldn’t start it at the beginning until 45 minutes AFTER the game ended. So if you wanted to watch the full game, you had two choices. Watch when it starts, or wait 45 minutes after it ended! Are you kidding me. I thought i kept doing something wrong so I chatted with Amazon. They said that you couldn’t join a game you recorded from the beginning while it was still playing! And if you stayed up until the game was over so you could watch the whole thing, their forwarding through commercials was terrible, AND the picture is much worse on replay than during the live broadcast. Does MLB know this? Do they care?
For at least half the season, watching games live on Prime had significant buffering.
nexttv.com/news/tentative-deal-between-diamond-spo…