The Braves today announced the launch of BravesVision, a team-owned media entity which will broadcast the club’s games and make them available on television and via streaming. Fans will be able to deal directly with the team to access the broadcasts with no local blackouts. This will include all regular season games except those which are subject to national exclusivities. For those with questions about the details, the club released an FAQ page.
Up until recently, Atlanta was one of several teams with a regional sports network (RSN) deal with Main Street Sports, formerly known as Diamond Sports Group. That company’s portfolio of MLB clubs has been shrinking in recent years as they have hit financial trouble, largely caused by cord cutting. As of the start of this year, Main Street still had deals with nine MLB clubs, including Atlanta. The company missed some payments, which caused all nine teams to terminate their deals in January.
Earlier this month, six of those teams pivoted to having the league handle the broadcasts. Atlanta was one of the three still undetermined, but with some signs they would launch their own broadcast network, which has effectively come to pass with this announcement.
It’s difficult to say how this will impact the club’s bottom line in the long run. As of a few years ago, Atlanta was getting more than $100MM annually from their RSN deal. Travis Sawchik of MLB.com has reported that clubs who have lost their RSN deals and pivoted to new arrangements have been bringing in about 50% less than before, on average.
Atlanta is going a slightly different route than most of the other clubs in this position. The majority of them have handed the reins over to the league. The Rangers have been an exception, as they launched their own network a year ago, with Atlanta now following in that example. Evan Grant of The Dallas Morning News spoke to some team officials about the situation in October. Those employees spoke highly of the increased ratings of the new arrangement but were more cagey about whether the club made as much money as they had on their previous RSN deal.
Down the line, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has a goal of marketing a streaming package that includes the rights of as many clubs as possible. It will be challenging to get them all on board since many of the large-market clubs have healthy RSN setups that they own or co-own. They will have some reticence about joining a more centralized arrangement that would see them sharing TV revenue with smaller markets.
For fans, today’s news seems to largely be a positive. Due to a dispute in 2024, there were times where the club’s games weren’t even available to some cable subscribers in the local area. Now the majority of the club’s games should be accessible to fans everywhere.
Photo courtesy of Brett Davis, Imagn Images
Sale extension makes a little more sense now
Sounds like something Monty Burns would come up with
Right? cheesy flashing Cartoon tomahawk song icon 24/7
I prefer saving money via online piracy.
Put them back on TBS and call it a day.
That and send in black ops to render Smoltz to a secret offshore site in the Maldives so stupid grandpa takes are never to be heard from again
I was thinking that sending in black ops to render Maddux so he could be cloned would be a good move too.
right, I’ve already seen the Holiday Episode of Modern Family Season 8, and I’m sure The Impractical Jokers will understand.
Every team needs to do this.
I’m sure they would if they could.
They all need to just have a national deal through MLB TV like every other sports league, divide it evenly by 30 and call it a day. No more local TV RSN deals. It has been such a fiasco.
All every other team would need is to be owned by a broadcasting company like Liberty Media.
no local blackouts. I get it with the devaluation of RSN rights due to cord cutting, gate receipts become more important. but the Battery real estate development allows them another stream of income and to be honest, removing local blackouts will help keep MLB relevant to younger audiences just wanting to follow along their local team after attending 1-2 games a year in person.
as an Oriole fan no longer living in MD but rather NC… it’s not that easy for me to make a 7 hr trip back to Camden and the blackouts are terrible bc I’m in their “local region”. MASN has just rolled out with a streaming option but this is the first year ever I can watch without blackouts as the MLB app subscription blacked me out in years past.
I am a Braves fan from NC, that lives in PA. When I get mlb.tv games the Braves play against the Orioles, Nationals, Phillies, and Pirates are all blacked out. Then throw in the games on apps like AppleTV I don’t use, and there is almost no point in getting it. I read something earlier that made it seem like games on mlb.tv wouldn’t have the blackouts this season. But your points are so valid, all these goofy rule changes to appeal to a younger audience and yet all they really need to do is just make the games easily accessible on TV.
Try living in Iowa. Cubs, white Sox, twins, royals, cardinals and Milwaukee(maybe Detroit too) all blacked out as “local”
Good to hear you call North Carolina home. Hopefully you live close to the coast.
No baseball on tv but at least you get solid cue, pleasant weather, competitive intercollegiate hoops, and Andy and Barney Fife as your law enforcement. Life could be worse. Like what they say about heaven and hell in Europe.
How does that make any sense? Preventing you from consuming your Os? Watcha supposed to do- road trip to birdland on the weekly? I’ve done that trip- watch out for those state troopers in southern Virginia.
NC is Reds country too, believe it or not. Blackouts there for them too. Crazy.
BravesVision4000 now in spectacular technocolor
What was the Braves vision in signing Ha Seoung Kim for 20M this season?
Thats a slippery slope.
See the laughing bald chanting brave in all his splendid glory the way our creator (Ted Turner) intended it to be. What’s the rest of the network’s programming. Reruns of Designing Women and Dukes of Hazzard? Civil War reenactments?
In the Heat of the Night and the Andy Griffith Show.
For anyone wondering the cost, from their FAQ:
“How will Braves.TV work and how much will it cost?
Subscription packages and pricing for the 2026 season will be available in March.”
Very cool that there are no local blackouts but the cost will be important.
Congratulations to the Atlanta Braves! Hope this works out for them.
Speaking of the Braves, are they still doing that obnoxious Tomahawk chop crap? God, that is so corny , cringy and inappropriate.
Have you considered crying about it? Maybe you can explain what is inappropriate about it? They have the blessing of the Chief of the Southern Tribes. Should they have asked you, as well?
It’s such it’s such a stupid cringe thing to do with the worst imagined racial trope attached to it. I feel it’s insulting to even have to explain it to people in 2026 but this is the south so I guess….
“Its such a stupid..have to explain it to people”…Why would you “have to explain” it to people, are you the voice of native Americans? Did you consult with natives before becoming their self appointed voice?
Or do you think the natives(and other minorities)are so inferior and dumb that they need people like you to speak for their culture?
Maybe if the MSM didn’t only represent a small (liberal)section of America, minorities would be able to speak for and represent their selves.
Oh come on, just broadcast them in the middle of the TBS primetime lineup like you used to!
That makes sense since Braves Holdings’ parent company is Liberty Media, a broadcasting company.
I think that within a few years it will be a moot point as all teams broadcast rights will be represented by MLB directly.
Just in case you are not aware, in broadcasting increased ratings = more money. If the Rangers ratings are up, they are most likely making more money.
No way the Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, or Cubs are relinquishing their networks to MLB
I’m dumb, I read the name and my little brain thought of the Marvel Cinematic Universe lol
The Pirates got so lucky that they could just piggyback on the local RSN the Penguins built.
hey Arte Moreno – check this out?
Their original deal was up in 2027 if it had kept going. Does anyone know if this is just temporary? They better get a deal that rakes in billions like the other top teams or they’re doing themselves a disservice.
They’ve got one of the largest fanbases in the country and they’ll be able to sell this new channel to cable networks all over the South. I can’t imagine they see this as a temporary thing.
When I first read the title, I could thought the Braves are creating a vision plan.
There wasn’t enough meat on the bone for both the team and the RSN to make money. But perhaps there will be for just the team.
I miss the days when Braves games were on TBS and the Cubs were on WGN. Made summers great as a teen.
Bring back The Three Stooges during rain delays.
Looks like we have new threading on the comment section. Hopefully that makes it easier to tell who responded to our comments.
This makes a tremendous amount of sense for the Braves who are a spin off from Liberty Media. I wonder if Arte will take this same approach for the Angels or since he doesn’t have the broadcast background if he will get off his dupa and go with MLB to do the negotiation with carriers and technical side of the broadcasts.
All of this is crap. Been paying for mlb.tv to watch Cardinal games. Trying to re up this year and it’s saying it goes thru ESPN and have to get espn unlimited now also. What the crap ? How much more is that Gina cost now?