Bally Sports Possibly Declaring Bankruptcy - Latest (Amazon's Pending Streaming Impact)

[MrTPlush]

27 minutes ago, BrewCrewForever said:

I picked the free Bally sub for one of my reward last season. But this season it was not a reward you could pick. But a week or two ago I got an email from Bally that the Brewers gifted me another season free. And I was just about to subscribe for the $20 per month. I wondered if all season seat holders got that? Or just one's that picked it last year?

Dang, I should have picked that reward. 😅 Considering it came from Bailly, it was probably directed at those customers.  

[valpocrewsader]

19 hours ago, ReverendBrewmeister said:

MLB At Bat gives you that. It’s now $29.99/year to subscribe. You get the radio calls from each team.

Thanks for the advice. Subscribed today and got to listen to the game with the TMJ feed. What a treat. I found the overall UI/UX to be a bit less intuitive than expected. Like "At Bat" kindof exists as its own thing, but kindof doesn't. Felt like I needed to navigate various MLB webpage layers and hunt for the radio links, including a confusing lack of cohesion between desktop and mobile/app, but eventually got where I needed to go in both platforms. (And is it really necessary for MLB to have both a full MLB app and also a standalone MLB Ballpark app? Yeesh...)

Anyways, $30 total seems like a sweet deal for the season-long enjoyment I should get from listening to the Brewers Radio Network from down here in TN. And supposedly I'll also get MiLB live video streaming with this subscription? Could be nice to keep up with the Sounds season.

When today's game was over, I got about 20-30 minutes of the postgame show before the stream cut out mid-broadcast.  Is that about the norm?

[valpocrewsader]

Duplicate

[wiguy94]

28 minutes ago, valpocrewsader said:

Anyways, $30 total seems like a sweet deal for the season-long enjoyment I should get from listening to the Brewers Radio Network from down here in TN. And supposedly I'll also get MiLB live video streaming with this subscription? Could be nice to keep up with the Sounds season.

That's correct. You can watch all MiLB games with an At Bat subscription. Really great value in my opinion.

[ReverendBrewmeister]

2 hours ago, valpocrewsader said:

When today's game was over, I got about 20-30 minutes of the postgame show before the stream cut out mid-broadcast.  Is that about the norm?

That’s the norm. It stays with the “official” postgame wrap up. Then drops off. I usually end up switching to the streaming of the other postgame shows on other Milwaukee station sites (like 97.3 The Game). You should also be able to stream WTMJ after the Brewers radio network programming ends. 

[young guns]

I started watching the game a few minutes late with the tv app and wanted to play catchup.  The usability of the fast forward and rewind is insane.  Try to fast forward a bit and boom you're 7 years in the future.  Rewind...are those dinosaurs?  Finally get close to where you want it and watch half an inning and press fast forward, here's an inning and a half ago.  And just to add salt to the wound, ff function disabled while commercials are on.

[ClosetBrewerFan]

The app sucks.  It kicks you out at the end of the game, then you need to find the post game and click on that.  Terrible

[LouisEly]

On 3/30/2024 at 2:10 PM, young guns said:

I started watching the game a few minutes late with the tv app and wanted to play catchup.  The usability of the fast forward and rewind is insane.  Try to fast forward a bit and boom you're 7 years in the future.  Rewind...are those dinosaurs?  Finally get close to where you want it and watch half an inning and press fast forward, here's an inning and a half ago.  And just to add salt to the wound, ff function disabled while commercials are on.

Which app, Bally's?  I watched the replay of both games on the Bally's app (Sunday wasn't on) via an Amazon Fire Stick and I was able to skip forward 15 seconds at a time even during commercial breaks.  Yes, I needed to skip forward 8-10 times between innings, but overall it works fairly well, much better than last year.  Can skip forward 15 seconds between pitches for slow-working pitchers or when there is a foul ball.

[young guns]

2 hours ago, LouisEly said:

Which app, Bally's?  I watched the replay of both games on the Bally's app (Sunday wasn't on) via an Amazon Fire Stick and I was able to skip forward 15 seconds at a time even during commercial breaks.  Yes, I needed to skip forward 8-10 times between innings, but overall it works fairly well, much better than last year.  Can skip forward 15 seconds between pitches for slow-working pitchers or when there is a foul ball.

It was the ballys app on roku.  Maybe they're different on the 2 platforms or its different while the game is live.

[homer]

3 minutes ago, young guns said:

It was the ballys app on roku.  Maybe they're different on the 2 platforms or its different while the game is live.

I was trying to pause the game and then fast forward to "live" and couldn't get it to work right. I was using a universal remote and not my Roku remote so maybe that had something to do with it. I had to log out of the app, then log back in and select "Watch Live".

[zurch1818]

As everyone is pretty much aware, the android and roku app is complete garbage. If you don't need to cast and want to watch on your phone, I've found watching the game on the Brave browser in desktop mode to be actually pretty decent (It actually won't let you stream on the mobile website).

The text on my phone when I make it full screen is cut off a little bit (just can't see the score), but is is very manageable. I've found you can go into settings in the lower right hand corner and even put it in "picture in picture" mode too. Just make sure if you want to browse in picture in picture mode to not close the Bally Sports app.

[Pugger]

It appears Bally Sports is finished and now in bankruptcy.  It looks like watching the Crew on TV is history.  😒

[MoreTrife]

2 minutes ago, Pugger said:

It appears Bally Sports is finished and now in bankruptcy.  It looks like watching the Crew on TV is history.  😒

Please give more detail? Finished when? Link?

And if that is the case, I'm sure something will be figured out by MLB and the Brewers for TV rights.

[Paul77]

22 minutes ago, Pugger said:

It appears Bally Sports is finished and now in bankruptcy.  It looks like watching the Crew on TV is history.  😒

I'm curious what you're seeing to come to this conclusion. 

I understand that Bally's is far from out of trouble, but they are not shutting down tomorrow.

The Braves, Tigers, Twins (and other?) games disappearing from TV today is a carriage issue (with Comcast), not due to Bally's financial problems. Those games are still airing on other cable providers. For example, they just signed (are super close to?) a new deal with DirecTv and are in negotiations with Comcast.

This is the same thing that happened a while back when ESPN and ABC were dropped from Comcast during a carriage negotiation. 

The last thing I saw was that things were turning semi-optimistic for Bally's after some restructuring, the new cable carriage deals, and the infusion of cash from Amazon.

[Vgmastr]

26 minutes ago, MoreTrife said:

Please give more detail? Finished when? Link?

And if that is the case, I'm sure something will be figured out by MLB and the Brewers for TV rights.

Comcast/Xfinity dropped Bally's.  Bally's is still operating and Spectrum isn't affected.

[Pugger]

This is all rather screwy.  I'm in Florida so we got the MLB Extra Innings package to watch Brewers games.  Right now we are watching the Cards/Tigers game and both teams are on Bally.  I'm wondering if it just Bally here in FL for Rays and Marlin games that is being affected?  I'll check at the top of the hour for the Twins game...

[brewerfan82]

2 hours ago, Pugger said:

This is all rather screwy.  I'm in Florida so we got the MLB Extra Innings package to watch Brewers games.  Right now we are watching the Cards/Tigers game and both teams are on Bally.  I'm wondering if it just Bally here in FL for Rays and Marlin games that is being affected?  I'll check at the top of the hour for the Twins game...

Sounds like you're just blacked out for the Rays/Marlins because of your location. No?

[Pugger]

1 hour ago, brewerfan82 said:

Sounds like you're just blacked out for the Rays/Marlins because of your location. No?

Normally we get the Rays and Marlin games but for some reason not anymore starting today.  We got last night's Rays game.  Go figure...

[nate82]

MLB in talks with Roku to televise Sunday morning baseball.

https://theathletic.com/5468039/2024/05/02/mlb-roku-sunday-morning-baseball/?source=user_shared_article

[nate82]

Want another reason to hate the Yankees and the Dodgers or the regional sports networks?  Well they are the ones holding up the blackout restrictions.  Also some teams and the MLB commissioner are pushing for a national streaming deal but the large market teams are holding this back along with the Bally bankruptcy.  The MLBPA will also be involved with this since it is a revenue sharing platform which means 2026 could be the earliest we see any headway on this. 

MLB is really trying to ditch the regional sports networks and go 100% streaming or close to 100% streaming.  If Bally continues to walk blindly and stumble through this bankruptcy proceeding Manfred may have enough teams to start up a national streaming shared revenue deal.  Though this would be without some of the major teams like the Dodgers and Yankees.  I don't think MLB will get a lot but definitely more than what they are getting from the regional sports networks for the teams.

This then brings up the question if the Yankees, Dodgers and others don't participate in this then are they then excluded from the revenue sharing?  I would think the large market teams would still demand revenue sharing from this even though they would only participate when they are playing the teams that are in this new streaming deal. 

I would also assume local TV would probably go away or MLB may sell some of the rights to a local TV station which would probably be a Milwaukee only TV station (using the Brewers as an example).  So if you live outside of the Milwaukee area the only way to watch if you can't get the TV station from over the air would be from whatever streaming service it would be on.  I think MLB would consolidate these to one platform like Amazon and then run the other with Facebook, Apple, Roku, and YouTube then also the games that are played on FS1, Fox, MLB Network and ESPN. 

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5500209/2024/05/17/mlb-national-streaming-deal-tv/

[owbc]

4 minutes ago, Oxy said:

Maybe.  Or maybe we only get 80% of the games televised....and MLB will STILL blackout the locals from visitor mlb.tv feeds.  Who knows.

It will be incremental progress but the sooner the RSN model blows up the better.