OT: More RSN troubles; Bally's loses rights to broadcast Padres after missed payment
Bally's parent company Diamond Sports is in chapter 11 bankruptcy and had missed a payment to MLB for broadcast rights for Padres games. Starting today games will be produced by MLB and distributed on local cable networks and for free at MLB.com and on their app.
MLB statement includes this interesting bit: (emphasis mine)
“While we’re disappointed that Diamond Sports Group failed to live up to their contractual agreement with the club, we are taking this opportunity to reimagine the distribution model, remove blackouts on local games, improve the telecast, and expand the reach of Padres games by more than 2 million homes,"
My fear/expectation is that, as cable package subscriptions fall, the RSN model becomes more and more unsustainable and the leagues shift to a separate subscription service, making the cost for receiving live sports broadcasts/streams go up.
https://apnews.com/article/padres-bally-sports-mlb-906f9f1ad0d66264b92b9cbe0ecd888a
ESPN is already on its way off the old cable/stv packages. They will be going standalone and have different pricing tiers and stuff. Once they bought the rest of BAMTech, Disney made it clear they were putting up a wall around the broadcasts and the best way to increase margins on such distribution is to cut out the middlemen (cable and satellite providers).
I think the trend of higher prices for live sports will continue but have to wonder if other bidders start to drop out on things. ESPN as a cable network was limited to however many channels they had. No such issue with a purely streaming service since they could, in theory, broadcast as many games as they have capacity and rights.
ESPN as a cable network was limited to however many channels they had. No such issue with a purely streaming service since they could, in theory, broadcast as many games as they have capacity.
They’ve been validating this for a while now. I use Hulu Live and the amount of ESPN live content that isn’t tethered to a channel is astounding (and a massive “win” for the sports fan).
Similarly, I have a free ESPN+ subscription and it's bonkers how much live sports content is being broadcast at any given moment.
Wasn’t the missed payment to the Padres (not MLB)?
Can they miss a payment to broadcast Tigers games? Please?
I'm about to drop Xfinity Stream (since I already have YTTV), so no more Tigers for me. Free on the MLB app would be a nice development.
The last line of the article said,
A hearing will be held on Wednesday whether Diamond can reduce its rights fees payments to the Cleveland Guardians, Minnesota Twins, Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks.
So it sounds to me that the RSN's for these smaller market teams are also in trouble. I think the Tigers have a large enough market and good ratings to last a while longer, but I'm so not sure about that.
I think it will all come crumbling down. A train wreck. I don't see the old timers with cable running to sign up for streaming, not at those prices. The newer generations don't seem to be such loyal sports fans, maybe I'm wrong. So the TV revenue will shrink A LOT. Attending live games is also expensive. It seems to me like an inflection point has been reached where teams may not be able to pay the high salaries anymore.
As long as Bally/Sinclair owns the Tigers rights, I will never watch another game ever. I don’t care how long it takes.
Interesting how the Padres shitty start coincides with this decision, and my recent move just blocks from the ballpark.
Of course viewer costs are going to go up. Have you paid attention to attendance a live sports lately? At many/most events the stands are half empty, or more.
Are player, coach, and executive salaries going down with attendance? Nope. So where do you think the extra money is going to come from? Broadcast rights and MORE ads.