This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.
Sports broadcasting is in a state of flux, and not just when it comes to Major League Baseball games. For decades now, cable has been at the forefront, and it has paid dividends for leagues to align themselves with cable companies, literally, thanks to the carriage fees that every customer — sports-watching or not — were saddled with. With cable subscriptions trending down, though, and streaming and cable alternatives having taken hold, a new future is needed, to provide new revenue streams. Or, at least, ones that aren’t headed in the wrong direction.
This, in a general sense, is old news with MLB — I wrote about their problems with the regional sports network (RSN) model and the kinds of complaints and negotiating tactics that the Players Association would have to deal with from management back in 2021 for Baseball Prospectus, and it wasn’t necessarily new then, either. It’s reared its head in some new ways of late, however, such as with the end of the ESPN/MLB partnership looming, and MLB’s pretty open desire to switch to a different revenue-sharing model that’s more akin to that of the NFL.
Continue reading “On MLB’s potential MLB.tv, MLB Network plans”