Latest MLB offer, AUSL unionization, small-market World Series

The league’s latest proposal, a unionized softball league, and what the end of the Dodgers’ season means.

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There is no one major thing to look at today — I’m still mulling over the parallel progress of the player-pay-deflating Protect College Sports Act with the blatant executive cash grab of the 24-team College Football Playoff — so let’s take a tour through a few smaller bits for now.

MLB’s latest proposal

I covered this in detail at Baseball Prospectus earlier this week, but here are some additional thoughts. MLB proposed a 154-game season that would institute a No Mondays scheduling policy, save for the creation of another national game, meant to spotlight more teams and also of course make more money in broadcast deals. Along similar lines, the postseason would expand, but not in terms of teams — instead, the Division Series round would move from five games to seven, meaning instead of 12-20 possible DS games every October the range would be 16-28. That’s more national television to package and sell, too.

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MLB’s investment in Athletes Unlimited intrigues

MLB has made a significant investment in professional softball, which could end up being great news for the sport.

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Obviously, it’s a rarity in this space when MLB’s business activities are brought up and not immediately ripped apart for some deserved transgression. So hey, let’s enjoy something happening where I’m leaning far more toward, “huh, neat” than “what’s their goal, here?” with eyes narrowed.

I’m speaking of, as the headline already alerted you to, Major League Baseball’s significant investment in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, or AUSL. Last summer, I wrote about the AUSL for Baseball Prospectus, in a piece titled “Athletes Unlimited and a New Model for Pro Sports.” Here’s a bit of that to get you up to speed on the league and my thoughts on it:

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Notes: MLB discussing national streaming package, Athletes Unlimited Softball, WNBA TV deal

MLB is working on national streaming, Athletes Unlimited brings a new model to our attention, and the WNBA is close to a record TV deal.

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It’s felt, for some time, like MLB was moving toward having some kind of national streaming package in place as a replacement for the regional sports network model. It just hadn’t been explicitly said by anyone in a position of power with the league yet: instead, it’s been a lot of putting pieces together and projecting from there, something I’ve been doing in this space and at Baseball Prospectus for some time now.

Now, though, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has outright said this is something they’re considering, due to what he describes as the “deteriorating” of the RSN business: “We know the future is going to be streaming. What we’re hearing from the streamers is they want a more national product, and we need to be responsive to what people want to buy.”

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