Commissioner Rob Manfred covered a wide range of topics in yesterday’s press conference from the owners’ meetings. Along with comments on the Orioles’ sale agreement and the A’s ballpark plans in Las Vegas, he spoke of a desire to create an in-market streaming bundle as soon as next year.
“Realistically, my target to having a digital package I can take to market would be for the ’25 season,” the commissioner told reporters (link via Evan Drellich of the Athletic). The hope is to include at least 14 teams in a streaming bundle they can market directly to consumers without blackout restrictions.
MLB already makes out-of-market streaming for all 30 teams available via its MLB.TV platform. Most fans are unable to stream in-market games on MLB.TV because of restrictions in teams’ regional broadcasting contracts. With the RSN model on shaky ground for a number of clubs, MLB could be able to work around blackout issues for a number of organizations in the relatively near future.
The Diamond Sports Group bankruptcy provides the clearest avenue. Diamond has already dropped its deals with the Padres and Diamondbacks, putting the onus on MLB to handle those broadcasts. Meanwhile, AT&T abandoned its contracts with the Rockies, Astros, Pirates and Mariners this offseason. MLB is handling Colorado broadcasts this year. The Mariners, Astros and Pirates have all taken those responsibilities on their own, with the Astros and Pirates partnering with teams from other leagues in their respective cities as part of a new broadcasting arrangement.
Diamond is going to carry broadcasts for its remaining 12 teams in 2024. It is honoring its contracts in full with nine teams* and reached deals at slightly reduced rights fees to handle Rangers, Guardians and Twins broadcasts for another season. Drellich tweeted this morning that the bankruptcy court approved those contracts, as expected.
Whether Diamond will be able to maintain its operations beyond this year remains to be seen. The conglomerate is hopeful that it can stay in business after agreeing to sell whatever MLB, NHL and NBA streaming rights it possessed to Amazon in a deal that’ll bring in a short-term cash influx of $450MM. MLB officials have expressed some skepticism about that being enough to keep Diamond afloat for the long haul.
If Diamond were to collapse after next season, that’d revert the broadcasting rights for those 12 teams back to MLB. In addition to the three it already possesses and the potential to negotiate with Seattle, Houston, and Pittsburgh, the league could shop around two-thirds of its teams on an in-market streaming bundle by next year. MLB would likely have a harder time negotiating in-market streaming rights back from franchises like the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers and Cubs that are on stabler footing and handle distribution of their games on RSNs owned at least in part by the team.
Once there’s more clarity on the broadcasting situation, it seems the league will start laying the groundwork for a potential expansion process. “We’re going to have to get our footing on local media a little bit better. In times of uncertainty, it’s hard to talk about additional change,” Manfred said when asked about expansion (link via Jesse Rogers of ESPN). “Having said that, I have five years left. Those teams won’t be playing by the time I’m done but I would like the process along and [cities] selected.”
As Manfred indicated, his contract runs for another five seasons. The owners voted last July to extend his tenure until January 2029. While there’s little doubt they’d approve another extension if Manfred wanted to continue into the 2030s, his comments seem to suggest he could step away after this term.
That’d put the 2025-28 seasons as a loose timeline for the league to seriously evaluate options for moving from 30 to 32 teams. Manfred has previously made clear that there’d be no expansion consideration until the A’s and Rays stadium situations were sorted out. With those moving closer to resolution, albeit with plenty of controversy in the A’s case, expansion should be a more serious topic by the second half of the decade.
*Angels, Braves, Brewers, Cardinals, Marlins, Rays, Reds, Royals, and Tigers
Like the idea of mlbtv with no blackouts in theory, though without RSN, dont want to have to buy mlbtv and nbatv. (Our NFL local games are always on network tv. Don’t watch nhl)
I don’t understand how this is the commissioner’s issue. The teams own the broadcast rights to their games and enter into RSN contracts individually. MLB isn’t a party to those deals outside of mandating access to outside of area streaming for MLB.TV and for the nationally televised games. The teams make all the money from the RSN deals.
The Reds are part owners of Bally Sports Ohio. I don’t know very much else about it though. Curious if that has any effect on things.
They ought to just do their own like Pittsburgh is doing and forget about anyone else.
I’m not opposed to that, but how will that work out for them in the end? Will they be better or worse off? I just want them to get as much $$$ as possible to help the payroll.
Same here.
You think there’s half a million Reds fans willing to pay $30/month for live streaming? That’s a lot of fans.
That’s $15m. They get like $44m right now with the RSN…
That’s 15M$ per month. Times six months and it’s 90M$. 500K is likely way too high a figure to expect, 30$ a month could be way too low of a figure.
I wasn’t an ONUS for MLB and the teams to partner to PRODUCE, not broadcast, their games. MLB already had the capabilities and had been doing it for decades. It made sense for MLB to do it for the teams they started doing it for because those teams did not own the facilities to do so like the Mariners, Pirates and Astros do.
ALL of those teams can now be streamed through MLB.tv locally with no blackout if the teams approve.
After 2024 ALL teams that were DSG will be able to be streamed on MLB.tv locally with no blackout.
However, MLB subsidized the income for the teams it handled, and, paying teams more than their streaming brought in certainly was an onus. It said to handle it for the year, not just produce things, and, guaranteeing the income was part of that
All you have to do is read the filings in the DSG bankruptcy case to know that isn’t true. MLB made one payment to the Padres of 80% of the MAY payment that DSG defaulted on. Even though they were on the hook to pay 80% of all TV revenue the Padres lost, they never had to make another payment to them. They never made even a single payment to the Diamondbacks.
That was also not the gist of the sentence. They were saying that the onus of doing the broadcasts for the teams fell to MLB, when the teams could have easily made a deal with another entity like the Mariners, Pirates, and Astros have chosen to do.
Expansion? Hahahahahahahaha…
Huh? It’s already in the works. MLB has more revenue than it’s ever had and multiple potential expansion ownership groups are competing with each other.
I see you believe the hype. The revenue numbers are skewed by the large markets. The reality for two thirds of clubs in small and now even middle markets are quite different.
MLB remains the second highest revenue-generating professional sports league in the entire world. Franchises are selling for record profits. No team loses money, including the A’s who don’t even attempt to sell tickets. The disconnect between reality and what fans believe is huge. The only thing slowing expansion is the other owners not wanting to share national TV revenue. The rights fees will be in the billions, so they’ll get past that hurdle.
“Second-highest” — higher than the NFL or the Premier League?
We all know that when Americans say things like “2nd highest in the World” they mean 2nd highest in America.
Anyone who was born outside of the US like myself, knows the difference! When we hear “the Rangers are World Champions” we know that translates to “we are the Champions of an American Sport”
It is curious though….how many things in America are ‘top in the Nation’ but marketed as the best in the World. There are many ways to interpret that, but thats for another forum!! Haha
It might be arrogant to say it, but I guarantee the winner of the 4 biggest US leagues (MLB, NBA, NHL and NFL) would whip any other team of that sport on Earth.
Now if our MLS Champion called themselves World Champs, that’d be nutty. But bring it on, other sports! U-S-A U-S-A U-S-A
@Chucky, I said “second highest” figuring everyone would know that the NFL is #1. MLB is #2 with the NBA #3. The Premier League is #4, slightly ahead of the NHL. All these leagues are very healthy. The only difference is MLB fans seems to think their league is about to die! :-).
The are publicly published numbers.
Well @ayrbhoy, you’d be wrong. Your anti-American comment added nothing to the conversation. I purposely referenced “world” since that’s how the numbers are reported. Thank you though for indirectly supporting my point that many baseball fans’ view regarding the financial health of the game is at times detached from reality. Now on a per game basis (or match) the Premier League generates higher revenue, but overall approximately only half the revenue of MLB.
All the major professional sports leagues are doing well. That includes the second-highest revenue generating sport in the world: MLB.
The sport won’t be dying anytime soon.
Actually, if I remember correctly, three teams had negative operating income last season. That doesn’t mean they’re not profitable, but it does mean they’re not profitable without TV broadcast rights. I don’t see the owners approving any expansion teams that will need revenue sharing.
The comments on expansion are interesting and tactically smart, especially in light of the Ray’s situation. Manfred hopes for leverage with other markets by telling them that the Rays need a slug of taxpayer money first–either from Tampa/Florida or from another city. Since there are a finite number of potential baseball owners Tampa (and the A’s as well if they are not finished) would be an impediment if not resolved. I suppose that he’d also want new teams not immediately be revenue sharing teams, seeing as they will probably be in smaller markets.
Exactly. Any expansion team would be behind the eight ball before they started. Any city or expansion group that falls for this fiasco deserves what they will get.
Investing a billion dollars give or take and then selling it for several folds in a decade sounds like a pretty good deal. I’ve yet to see an owner sell a professional sports team at a loss.
Most professional sports have a level playing field but one.
13 different teams won the WS in past 20 seasons.
There are 30 teams in the sport.
Now, I’ll preface this with the idea that certain teams have more fans outside their local media market than others.
You won’t find a ton of Marlins fans out of market for example, the way you would teams like LAD or NYY. And then there’s teams like BOS where many fans are boycotting paying for the privilege of watching a small-market roster suck.
But look at these numbers.
sportsmediawatch.com/nba-market-size-nfl-mlb-nhl-n…
Direct streaming uptake will probably lag what the traditional RSN was paying clubs on the most recent round of their deals.
So either prices will go way up, or revenue will wind up down, for many (not all) clubs.
Red Sox fans are loyal fans.
Plenty of us are still fans but refuse to spend money anymore.
I used to spend $8-10k a year just on tickets and in-park spending, and, it’s been $0 starting in 2020, first from closure, then from team direction and product.
NESN subscriptions are down, ticket sales are down, and, if you saw broadcasts on TV regardless of what official numbers were published, butts in the seats are down when they pan the ballpark.
Until they focus on the team instead of other sports, FSG is losing money from alot of lifetime fans.
BOS
2022 81 2,625,089 32,409
2023 81 2,672,130 32,989
Difference +47,041 +581
Red Sox attendance went up YOY.
We saw for both the Padres and Diamondbacks that the revenue didn’t lag behind what the RSN had been paying them. It was at least equal. For the Padres, who increased their total revenue so much that they moved from revenue sharing recipient to payor in 2023, it looks like they made more broadcast money once DSG defaulted.
A big part of that came from contracts signed directly with the individual cable, satellite, and streaming providers that already carried their DSG or WBD channel. I don’t know about the Diamondbacks, but the Padres are available on every provider that carried them when it was Ballys SD and they added 2 million TV households to their possible viewership.
And yet, they are all spent out. Taking on loans. Shipping out talent deemed as ‘too expensive’. Not competing for frontline free agents. Dumpster diving for guys to fill out the 40-man. Basically, they’re trying to shop at Valley Farms Market, but they don’t accept EBT/WIC.
But, yeah(!), tell me more about how awesome this is for the Friars…
Why not expand to Mexico City? We need another Coors Field in the MLB. Although, that second game was a bit of a downer. 6-4 when the previous game was 16-11? C’mon, MLB, if you want more offense and action, you can’t just have a 6-4 pitching duel right after a game jammed with action.
There were comments before that the players don’t consider it safe.
Which players consider it unsafe?
The last sentence in my first comment is why Manfred said the target is 2025 to bring that streaming service for local games to market.
what people need to realize is that MLB has vast experience at this and MLBAM was the largest streaming service in the world which handled many different sports. They are literally the experts at this.
Manfred and the owners have been been champing at the bit to get all the streaming rights back. They now know that even with only a short ramp up time that people will buy a streaming package just for their team that is not blacked out locally for $20/mo.
In the DSG bankruptcy we found out that both the Padres and Diamondbacks sold more than 300k subscriptions last year that were still active at the end of the season. I would expect to see them both improve on that number this season. That is 2/3 of the money those teams got from DSG before the bankruptcy just from the streaming rights..
We also found out in the bankruptcy proceedings that and only the Padres ever received even one payment from MLB to make up lost TV revenue. They only received one payment to make up 80% of the $8.6 million payment DSG defaulted on for May. That means that from June on the Padres were not losing money from TV and the Diamondbacks never did.
We don’t know what those teams total revenue was, but we know that Padres revenue increased so much in 2023 that they moved into revenue sharing payor status. That is top half of teams. DSG going belly up has not hurt them at all.
I’m just waiting for MLB.tv to get rid of blackouts, for Cubs games specifically, and I’ll sign up.
I think the Cubs co-own Marquee Sports with DSG and you can already get in market games streamed for $19.99 per month.
sportspromedia.com/news/chicago-cubs-marquee-sport…
Yeah, the blackouts really mess with you midwest folks.
It really is sad. I have mlb.tv for Phillies games while living in Denver. I’d pay a little extra to hacve the blackout removed so that I could watch the Rockies.
I’d imagine you folks would as well if the blackout were removed.
The Cubs aren’t in need of MLB.TV. teams large enough to have their own sports network (Cubs, Yankees, LAD, etc) won’t be part of the deal for 2025
Do the math.
300k subscriptions at $20/mo is $6m/mo. There’s only 6 months to a season. 6×6 is $36m.
SD media market is 1.1m homes published for the immediate metro area. Not sure what uptake %age you think you’re going to get. MLB defines the potential market more broadly to a bit north of 3 million homes to include homes nearer SD than another team, but not the immediate metro.
Diamond was going to pay $1.2B/20yr, avg $60m a season.
To make that you need $10m/mo in streaming, or, average above 500k active users a month, every month, at $20. I’m not sure I see one in every 6 homes buying a season long subscription.
The math is that its $36 million per season and they were scheduled to get $54 million in 2023 and 2024 from DSG. That is 66% of the revenue just from streaming locally. That number will go up with more time to market the service.
That number you are quoting for the Padres TV deal doesn’t include the $200 million that went directly to John Moores and not to the Padres. As I said, the Padres were scheduled to get $54 million and we know that for a fact because of the filings in the DSG bankruptcy.
The Padres market is not just SD city or even county, .Its SD county, part of Riverside county, and Hawaii. They are now available on Spectrum Hawaii as well as in southern Riverside county as well and they weren’t before. There are numerous articles including on this site that have pointed out the increase in their TV market after the DSG default.
The Padres don’t need to make up the difference between the streaming and what DSG was paying them in streaming.
They are ALREADY on every provider they were on before. COX, Spectrum, AT&T, DIRECTV, and FUBO are not getting those broadcast rights for free. .
We don’t have to guess that in 2023 the Padres broadcast revenue was at least equal from June through October to what it would have been if DSG had not defaulted. We know that because MLB itself has said in filings in the DSG bankruptcy that MLB made just ONE payment to the Padres for 80% of the May payment that DSG defaulted on. Just the one. After that the Padres were making at a minimum the same as they would have made on the DSG deal. If the Padres were losing broadcast revenue, MLB would have made more payments to them.
This right here is by far the number 1 biggest problem MLB has. The fact people do not have access to watch the games. MLB needs to figure a way to allow anyone to be able to watch all their favorite teams games. And with the new Warner, ESPN and Fox sports streaming deal is going to make even more people to cut the cord.
MLB will not be able to develop and bring in any new fans if the people cannot watch the sport. So MLB end the blackouts and the owners need to get together and figure it out.
That ESPN-TNT-Fox joint venture is for national TV, not local TV.
And the first priority for ESPN and TNT will be renewing the NBA.
While expansion is inevitable, MLB trails both the NFL and NHL in total teams, is the A’s situation really close to a resolution?
That said. You have to believe Nashville is going to be one of two expansion franchises, the question is where will the second one be? Returning to Oakland or Montreal doesn’t seem likely. Not sure if Portland is still viable. Maybe Salt Lake City? Charlotte? A third team in Texas?
Charlotte is a good sports town, but the lack of a taste for that city’s citizens to give tax dollars for stadiums again will probably keep it from happening.
I don’t blame them in MLBs case without serious changes that guarantee a level playing field. But I would say that for any new team.
I think either Charlotte or Raleigh could support a team, and combined they have a very good media market footprint
Charlotte might be an option, but I don’t see the Braves liking that, especially if Nashville indeed gets a team.
I’m not as well rounded in what cities MLB has researched, but if Portland is not ferasible and Charlotte is out, what about Omaha? They had great turnouts for the MLB games there, the only issue I see is it cutting into the Royals market.
Another option might be San Antonio? I’m guessing that MLB would want 1 new team on each side of the Mississippi.
I actually wonder if Sacremento could be a good market for a team.
And with the Giants able to absorb some of Oakland’s share, it would offset moving a team into the north.
That’s good question. I had contemplated Sacremento when I was writing my comment, but I didn’t add it becuase I’m not familiar with those demographics and I figured it might cut into the Giants Market. Also, with being so close to an anrea that a team relocated from, it might not be an attractive spot at present.
Oakland has the fans, and it has the market size. It’s really an owner/business model problem, which, wasn’t helped by the condition the municipality let the venue and surrounding areas to degrade into.
The municipality should’ve fixed up that dump decades ago, so, it’s not all blame on the owner – although there’s certainly a lot more resources available to the club than have been spent on payroll recently.
I definitely think northern CA can support another team. The question is whether it makes more sense to put someone back in Oakland, or, a truly fresh start somewhere like the capitol.
If you read or listen to news, no business (big) is going into Cal. They’re leaving.
Portland, Oregon has a larger population than Sacramento, CA. An interesting discussion would be- should there be an expansion team in PDX or Sacramento?
Or San Jose?
The A’s situation is not even close to resolution. They have no financing to build a stadium, they probably won’t get any taxpayer funding in Nevada, the site is too small to build a retractable roof ballpark, and they don’t even have renderings for the ballpark yet. I would say its 50/50 that fisher is able to move there at all. Remember, this is the 3rd time Fisher has been this far in the process to build a new ballpark. Fremont, HT, and Las Vegas.None of the others got done.
When they are forced to move out of the Coliseum after 2024, as articles on this site have discussed, they will lose $70 million in TV revenue. They might recoup a bit of that by moving to Sacramento, but they have not even talked to the team there or the Giants about that possibility. That may force Fisher into bankruptcy and selling the team.
If they DO finalize a move to Las Vegas the media market size, which is what determines TV revenue, is 1/4 the size of the Bay Area.
So the A’s might be a team in limbo if Fisher is unable to come up with someone to finance this boondoggle.
As far as placing an expansion team in Oakland, if they decide to do so and sign an agreement before the end of 2025, as the Mayor of Oakland has said multiple times, the Howard Terminal site still has an approved $12 billion development available to that team that includes hundreds of millions of taxpayer money to cover infrastructure costs and transportation. Just not the extra $600 million Fisher asked for at the last minute of negotiations. But it is approved and ready to go. After 2025 the entire thing would have to start over from scratch. So Oakland is definitely a possibility if MLB acts now.
Joe Lacob has said he is willing and ready to buy the A’s and build at Howard Terminal.
In Portland they are in the process of buying the 55 acre property on which to build a ballpark. They are still viable.
I think what most people miss is this: I can’t see the owners agreeing to a team that doesn’t seem self sufficient long term. Because of the RSN situation, the bankruptcies of the Rangers and Dodgers not so long ago, and needing to bail out the Mets during the Madoff scandal, the owners will be loath to allow any new team to get revenue sharing.
What is the purpose of expansion when you don’t have enough ballplayers of major-league quality to fill 30 ballclubs already?
BIG $$$$ About $2 billion in expansion fees and additional national and local TV revenue plus 4 million plus new fans attending games.
I agree. I think that it waters down the product, but it appears that the almighty dollar eclipses that fact.
BTW, the streaming rights that DSG sold to Amazon are for 2024 and 2024 alone.
Curious to see what the difference of blackouts cost on the streaming package from this years current MLB offering to next years. But the blackout kills the fans in Iowa and Indiana and elsewhere where there is no MLB team but the TV territory is carved up between 5 or 6 teams. So for the people that say they will not buy tickets and travel really hurts the people who want to consume baseball. So we wait for details.
I know “Reds country” is considered to be seven states down to NC where games are blacked out without cable. Totally ridiculous. Many who cut the cord refuse to or can’t afford to buy cable or satellite for $100 to $150 a month just to watch baseball
Great Salt Lake is drying up due to overconsumption of water, and dust storms are causing health problems, visibility problems, and may become toxic as the rest of the lake dries up (heavy metals). Not sure how this unfolding catastrophe might affect MLB’s desire to expand there. Anyone live there and have an inkling if this is a factor?
(sltrib.com/news/environment/2023/09/19/heres-what-…)
(washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/06/…)
I listened to a Utah-based program (RadioWest) about SLC being a big league town, and the reporter cited the Lake’s environmental issues as the biggest hurdle getting MLB. Us outsiders don’t think about Salt Lake’s looming catastrophe, but yeah just ask the Aral Sea what happens when a salt lake disappears.
Hope Vegas builds a stadium, if only so the Mob can bury Manfred underneath it