How to Watch the Brewers On Television & Streaming In 2024

[Jason Wang]

Is Bally Sports Wisconsin still the home of Brewers baseball this year, or is Amazon Prime the new kid on the block?

Image courtesy of © Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports

It’s no secret that regional sports networks have been struggling over the past few years. After Diamond Sports Group (the operator of the Bally Sports networks) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2023, it seemed like things had taken a turn for the worse. In January of this year, it was announced that Amazon had made a $115-million investment in the company, acquiring access to the streaming rights currently owned by Diamond. This portfolio included a total of 40 teams, 11 of which are MLB. However, only five of these teams have their digital rights owned by Diamond Sports Group.

One of those teams is our very own Milwaukee Brewers. Right now, however, we've heard no indications that there will be major changes to fans' streaming options for the Crew. For those who are living in the area and considered to be “in-market” spectators with cable, you’ll watch the broadcast through Bally Sports Wisconsin. For those outside of the area and considered to be “out-of-market,” an all-teams MLB.TV subscription is still your best bet. 

As for Amazon, it’s still unclear as to how exactly they plan to utilize their newly acquired digital streaming rights. The current theory is that, similar to the existing in-market Bally Sports+ package, fans will be able to subscribe to an additional service to stream games from the five teams whose rights are still owned by Diamond Sports Group (Tigers, Royals, Marlins, Rays, Brewers). It’s yet to be seen whether an additional cost will be incurred, but given how things are these days, don’t be surprised if a nearly $2-trillion company tries to nickel and dime you. If you belong to the not-insignificant number of fans who only keep cable to see the Brewers, though, this could end up a money saver, depending on how things shake out.

Moving forward, it seems almost certain that RSNs will fade away, like cassette tapes and videos longer than two minutes. On the bright side, it’s possible that the expiration and non-renewal of exclusive cable rights will finally bring about the fall of the dreaded blackouts, be that in the form of an Amazon-based streaming platform or something managed by the league itself. With consumers continuing to move toward consolidated streaming platforms and away from cable, fans in Iowa may finally be able to enjoy the exploits of native son Colin Rea without donning the VPN invisibility cloak.

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[Secret Stadium Sauce]

So still a lot up in the air.  I used Bally last year then paused my subscription.  They emailed me about starting up again but I'm waiting to see what happens with Amazon where I'm a Prime member.

 

So, I'm not sure if I will be able to watch many preseason games but I sure hope they have this figured out before the regular season kicks off.

[NoahJ]

For anyone with T-Mobile, they'll be offering free MLB.tv again this year as well. Always has been a solid perk, and I've taken advantage of that as an out-of-state fan. 

[eddiemathews]

I can only assume that this will eventually end up costing people that want to watch all the games more than it does now. Isn't that how it works?

[NoahJ]

Quote

44 minutes ago, eddiemathews said:

I can only assume that this will eventually end up costing people that want to watch all the games more than it does now. Isn't that how it works?

If it moves to Amazon? Probably depends on the person and what they already have. Amazon hasn't charged more for Thursday night football (for example), so I'm guessing at least to start it will be more of a marketing add-on to get people to subscribe to Prime. So if you already have a subscription, I'd bet that it would be available for no additional fee. 

Down the road, who knows. Apple TV has an extra subscription fee for MLS, so there's also precedent for streaming services to add surcharges for this kind of thing. But I think Amazon likely makes much of their money on Prime through the data tracking and being able to use data to have better targeting to promote their ad services so the goal in the short term is to continue maximizing that. 

All conjecture of course.

[Jason Wang]

2 hours ago, NoahJ said:

For anyone with T-Mobile, they'll be offering free MLB.tv again this year as well. Always has been a solid perk, and I've taken advantage of that as an out-of-state fan. 

I very conveniently get a free subscription through my Seattle Mariners season ticket package which ironically means I watch way more Brewers games than Mariners games due to blackout restrictions.

[Bashopolis]

5 hours ago, NoahJ said:

If it moves to Amazon? Probably depends on the person and what they already have. Amazon hasn't charged more for Thursday night football (for example), so I'm guessing at least to start it will be more of a marketing add-on to get people to subscribe to Prime. So if you already have a subscription, I'd bet that it would be available for no additional fee. 

Down the road, who knows. Apple TV has an extra subscription fee for MLS, so there's also precedent for streaming services to add surcharges for this kind of thing. But I think Amazon likely makes much of their money on Prime through the data tracking and being able to use data to have better targeting to promote their ad services so the goal in the short term is to continue maximizing that. 

All conjecture of course.

It really might depend on whether you end up adding a service or dumping a different one and adding Amazon.  We recently dumped Spectrum and will pick up Fubu cause they have Bally -- there is a bit of savings there.  If it goes to Amazon, then I could see dumping Fubu and just doing NetFlix and Amazon Prime -- in that case we would save a lot of money.  

The good is that you can pick your watching options based on specifically what you want.  The big question I have is whether this diminishes the ability to attract new fans or engage the casual fan.  Boxing went totally towards pay per view and dropped out of the public conversation and ends up being replaced by MMA.  Is the move away from broadcast tv going to further marginalize baseball?  Considering that the fan base skews towards older white guys, this could be a problem for MLB.