Bally Sports Thread (Latest: Brewers reverse course, will remain with Diamond Sports, not MLB)

[owbc]

We may be free soon! 

[Oxy]

17 minutes ago, owbc said:

We may be free soon! 

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.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I'm splitting this out into its own topic because this is quite the development (maybe, depending on MLB's reaction to it).

One caveat is that because this is bankruptcy court, Bally and MLB will have to reach an agreement. They cannot do this unilaterally. And who knows what MLB is thinking right now.

[patrickgpe]

initial online reaction is that this would have an affect on how much $ is spent this offseason. I don't think so much for Milwaukee as they have by far the worst contract in MLB. 

For the life of me, I don't know for how much $$ MLB makes this year, how is this is a lingering problem. We knew about this for more than a year and Manfred has done nothing to preempt this. 

[owbc]

16 minutes ago, patrickgpe said:

initial online reaction is that this would have an affect on how much $ is spent this offseason. I don't think so much for Milwaukee as they have by far the worst contract in MLB. 

For the life of me, I don't know for how much $$ MLB makes this year, how is this is a lingering problem. We knew about this for more than a year and Manfred has done nothing to preempt this. 

Yeah my feeling on the revenue side is that this can only benefit us and potentially narrow the local TC revenue gap between us and others. 

Manfred is doing a ton behind the scenes, this is a huge deal for the owners. 

[Vgmastr]

MLB wants the rights back. They can make the money directly and cut out the middle man, so I'm sure they're happy about this.  They already have two teams using this model.  Bally's cancelled the contracts for the Padres and Diamondbacks last year and MLB took them over.  They're producing the games themselves and negotiating the deals directly with the cable and satellite companies for local broadcast.  Plus offering the games streaming through MLB.TV to the local fans for $20 a month or just with the full MLB.TV package.  I'd be ecstatic if the Brewers went to this model, I'd get the full MLB.TV package every season.

[patrickgpe]

13 minutes ago, Vgmastr said:

MLB wants the rights back. They can make the money directly and cut out the middle man, so I'm sure they're happy about this.  They already have two teams using this model.  Bally's cancelled the contracts for the Padres and Diamondbacks last year and MLB took them over.  They're producing the games themselves and negotiating the deals directly with the cable and satellite companies for local broadcast.  Plus offering the games streaming through MLB.TV to the local fans for $20 a month or just with the full MLB.TV package.  I'd be ecstatic if the Brewers went to this model, I'd get the full MLB.TV package every season.

i agree. This also makes tons of sense for MLB and I think it will improve the brewers TV revenue. 

[markedman5]

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/41569980/diamond-sports-group-carry-11-mlb-teams-2025

[nate82]

Going off of my last post in the other thread.  With this announcement it puts MLB one step closer to a national streaming deal.  I wonder if Amazon backed out of supporting Bally due to them not wanting to share as much revenue with Amazon.  With Bally all but dead now Amazon, Netflix, Apple, YouTube or Disney could step in here and be the streaming provider for MLB games at least for the non big market teams mainly the Dodgers and Yankees.

Blackouts are currently being held up by Bally and the large market teams.  This development eliminates one of the holdups for getting rid of the blackout rules.  I think the mid and small market teams have enough votes to get rid of the blackout rules.  The small and mid market teams may be able to get Chicago on their side along with the Angels.  That leaves the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Red Sox and Giants in the way of removing the blackout rules.  I believe it has to be 100% to remove the blackout rules but I could be wrong.

[MrTPlush]

17 hours ago, nate82 said:

Going off of my last post in the other thread.  With this announcement it puts MLB one step closer to a national streaming deal.  I wonder if Amazon backed out of supporting Bally due to them not wanting to share as much revenue with Amazon.  With Bally all but dead now Amazon, Netflix, Apple, YouTube or Disney could step in here and be the streaming provider for MLB games at least for the non big market teams mainly the Dodgers and Yankees.

Blackouts are currently being held up by Bally and the large market teams.  This development eliminates one of the holdups for getting rid of the blackout rules.  I think the mid and small market teams have enough votes to get rid of the blackout rules.  The small and mid market teams may be able to get Chicago on their side along with the Angels.  That leaves the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Red Sox and Giants in the way of removing the blackout rules.  I believe it has to be 100% to remove the blackout rules but I could be wrong.

How is Bally holding up blackouts? Bally was essentially nationally streaming their games as is. Either you were out of market and could pay $150 to watch the Brewers on MLB.TV or you were in market and could watch them for $20 a month. Which was $120 a total for April-September. $140 if you can't fit the full season in a 6 month window.

I also don't know if this is actually good for the Brewers at all...maybe even bad. If it wasn't profitable for Bally and they are dropping all these teams...it is going to magically be an amazing concept once we control it? I mean, sure, not bankrupt middleman to deal with...but is it going to be a financial gain for the Brewers? I don't know how commercial contracts works, but maybe this will allow us to keep more up to date on revenues. Right now we sign these big TV deals and by the end of it they are horrendous and outdated. Guess we shall see.

[Austin Tatious]

You’d think that the MLB could be more profitable by itself.  No rights fees.  

I assume with Sunday ticket revenue, all the NFL teams split it evenly.   

If the big market teams want to parse themselves out separately, maybe there is still a large consortium of teams who get involved with a Sunday ticket type of deal and split it evenly.  

[nate82]

22 minutes ago, MrTPlush said:

How is Bally holding up blackouts? Bally was essentially nationally streaming their games as is. Either you were out of market and could pay $150 to watch the Brewers on MLB.TV or you were in market and could watch them for $20 a month. Which was $120 a total for April-September. $140 if you can't fit the full season in a 6 month window.

They are holding it up by applying blackouts where you can only use their app/service to watch them.  There is still an option but it is still blacked out for other providers.  That is how Bally is holding up blackouts.  The more options the better for the consumer as that tends to lower prices a bit.

Without Bally MLB is free to negotiate with anyone they want on televising the games and opening it up to more competition.  The blackouts then go away as you will be able to watch the Brewers in Iowa using MLB.TV which wasn't possible previously. 

[wiguy94]

Looks like the Brewers will be available through MLB.tv going forward!

 

[markedman5]

 

[patrickgpe]

hopefully this means larger distributorship on cable / streaming options. 

[nate82]

For the Dbacks they just took over the channel they were on previously but the Suns also didn’t have a contract either so no Bally in Phoenix.  Not sure how that will work for the Brewers with the Bucks still having a deal with Bally.

Probably will be a whole new channel just for the Brewers.  May even have an OTA option depending on what the Brewers do.  

[patrickgpe]

I think the most likely scenario is nothing changes too much. As I just posted, I would hope like youtube.tv and sling gets a chance to show the games.

I think there is a possibility that WMLW, CW, UPN would get a chance to show the games, but then again markets outside of Milwaukee would have to figure it out. 

[RobertCrawley]

We will have to pay more to see the games. I can feel it in my bones.

[wiguy94]

Just now, RobertCrawley said:

We will have to pay more to see the games. I can feel it in my bones.

No you won't. 

[Matt]

As a viewed this could be nice. 

As a fan who cares about TV deal money for my team, this is lousy. 

[owbc]

2 minutes ago, Matt said:

As a viewed this could be nice. 

As a fan who cares about TV deal money for my team, this is lousy. 

We get the least TV money in MLB so it gives us the opportunity to be the most innovative with different broadcast solutions. The NHL teams that have crappy local TV revenue numbers are all going OTA. I agree with nate82 that this opens up the possibility of OTA, especially if Mark A sees the value in getting the product to more fans. 

[SeaBass]

44 minutes ago, RobertCrawley said:

We will have to pay more to see the games. I can feel it in my bones.

Per this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, last year Padres fans paid $99 for the full season through the MLB.tv app. In contrast the Ballys app charged $20 per month (so $120 over 6 months) and I think it was around $190 if you wanted an annual plan.

That doesn't mean the price won't change but I think it will be reasonable even if it does.

[dlk9s]

1 hour ago, patrickgpe said:

I think the most likely scenario is nothing changes too much. As I just posted, I would hope like youtube.tv and sling gets a chance to show the games.

Would be nice. I have YouTube TV down in the Atlanta area and it doesn't have Bally's Sports, so I can't watch the Brewers when they play the Braves (blacked out).

Fortunately, as a T-Mobile customer, I've been getting free MLB.tv every season. Hopefully that continues.

[MrTPlush]

1 hour ago, patrickgpe said:

hopefully this means larger distributorship on cable / streaming options. 

I doubt it...might make it even more unlikely. Reality is these streaming services don't want to pay a ton of money for the rights to distribute the games. It was a lot more lucrative to have when you either had to use cable or satellite TV. Now you have like 10 different options to watch TV. It is tough to sell that as a very valuable thing to add to your service and still make enough sense for MLB to not just get people to direct stream with them. 

The only reason to keep pushing it on cable/satellite is for the dinosaurs that watch games. 

I guess we will see, but I won't hold my breath it is magically going to pop up on Youtube TV any time soon. 

[SeaBass]

29 minutes ago, dlk9s said:

Fortunately, as a T-Mobile customer, I've been getting free MLB.tv every season. Hopefully that continues.

I doubt that will cover in market Brewers games. That will be on a different tier.