Brewers Part Ways With Bally Sports Wisconsin: MLB Will Produce Games, Blackouts Are Over

We already knew the Brewers' contract with Diamond Sports Group, the parent company of Bally Sports Wisconsin, was up at the end of the season. Now, we know that there will be no renewal, on either a short- or a long-term basis. Instead, the team and MLB's central office moved decisively. The Brewers. Guardians, and Twins will join the Padres, Diamondbacks, and Rockies under a growing league umbrella for broadcast rights starting next season, with the league taking on the responsibility of producing and distributing the telecasts.

The quick move to this form of distribution reflects a lack of desirable alternatives, more than a particular appetite or enthusiasm for this solution--at least in the short term. The league no longer wants to work with the bankrupt company behind the various Bally Sports networks, and that feeling is mutual. There's no one else in the sports broadcast distribution on this level, though, at least regionally. Unlike the NBA, it's not feasible for MLB to put a significant percentage of its games on national TV outlets, so their partnerships with ESPN, FOX and Turner Sports can't be expanded to stand in for local broadcasts. Besides, fans like to hear their local announcers call their games.

For myriad reasons, the league can't provide teams with as much money as they were making under their contracts with major broadcast partners. Cable carriers no longer pay top dollar to keep the channels on which games air on board, and often silo those channels in premium packages few customers want to pay for. The cable TV bubble popped years ago; it's just taking effect now for much of the league.

This move will have major financial ramifications for the whole league this winter, and in years to come. In the short term, though, it means that fans will be able to buy monthly or yearly subscriptions to a version of MLB.TV that allows them to tune into Brewers games. The rate for that subscription might feel onerous, or very reasonable, depending both on how badly those fans want the right to watch games that way and on whether they already paid for MLB.TV, anyway.

Because the Brewers draw so well in person and were never making as much for their TV rights as many other teams in the league, this will hit them less hard than some of their neighbors, but it still means a diminution of revenue in one key sector, for an industry where virtually every decision over the last 30 years has been informed by a confident expectation of uninterrupted growth. That means a lot of uncertainty ahead, but for fans who have struggled to access Brewers telecasts in recent years, it's good news.

Meanwhile, for fans who have watched the team on cable, little is likely to change. The league plans to negotiate small, non-disruptive deals with major cable and satellite carriers to get a designated channel where they can air games for subscribers, without the carriage fees that became bones of contention between entities like Diamond Sports Group and Spectrum. This feels like a transitional year toward what might end up being a very different kind of solution in the future, but in 2025, it looks like the Brewers will be easier to watch, and not much (if at all) more expensive. In that sense, it's probably good news for fans, who matter most in this equation and often get the least honest treatment.