How Brewers Could Leverage Increased Short-Term Spending Power of New FanDuel Network Deal

It felt a bit like an intentional news dump when, on Tuesday afternoon, the Brewers announced a pivot from their previous plan to have MLB produce and distribute their broadcasts for 2025. Instead, the team has a new deal with FanDuel Sports Network, the same entity (renamed in October) formerly known as Bally Sports Network, owned by Diamond Sports Group. Diamond is set to emerge from bankruptcy, and the Brewers will be among a handful of teams still contracted with them for 2025.

The deal was announced in that manner because the team knew it might be an unpopular decision. Fans who had waited years for a way to pay directly for the right to watch Brewers games without expensive broader subscriptions attached thereto finally seemed to have gotten their wish under the MLB distribution plan, but now, they'll have to wait a bit longer. This deal does include a minor compromise, in that fans can purchase access to games via Amazon Prime Video, but that depends on first being a subscriber to that service, so it feels a bit like they're all the way back on cable.

All gray clouds have silver linings, though, and the good news with this move is that it promises to put some extra money in the pockets of the Brewers. While the deal might very well net them less than they were making under old-fashioned regional sports network rights fee agreements, it should make them at least $10 million more than selling subscriptions only and directly via the MLB platform would have, factoring in all ancillary costs and revenue streams.

That only matters if the dough is reinvested, but it's only fair to note that the Attanasio family has tended to reinvest revenue fairly well throughout their two-decade stewardship of the team. There's always room for billionaires to give more freely of their needlessly humongous fortunes, but if we grade on the appropriate curve, the Attanasios are fairly faithful about this. If it turns out that announcing this change in the shadow of the ball dropping in Times Square was an attempt to make us all miss or misunderstand it, and they do pocket whatever influx of cash it provides, then they should be ashamed of themselves. It feels more likely, though, that they'll funnel a good chunk of the money they stand to make into the budget for baseball operations.

For Matt Arnold, that could mean a few exciting and unexpected options are viable, after all. There are several players under short-term team control elsewhere in the league, but whose current employers want to move on from them for budgetary reasons. The Brewers have already done their fat-trimming this winter, and could be a late beneficiary of some financial desperation in other quarters. However, they could also bide their time and lay in the weeds on some free agents who appear to have robust markets, but for whom the bottom might fall out and who could thus become interested in late-January short-term deals with player-friendly flexibility.

Does that mean Alex Bregman? Probably not. He's low on obvious suitors, at this stage, but there are likely to be teams willing to give him a nine-figure deal—or, if he prefers a deal that gives him the right to re-enter free agency in a year or two, who would pay him $30 million or so for 2025. Even after this change of TV plans, the Brewers don't have that kind of liquidity. It would take either an unusual surge of competitiveness from Mark Attanasio and Arnold or a total collapse of the market for Bregman to land in Milwaukee, despite the many ways in which it would be a great fit.

However, Jack Flaherty is much closer to falling into the Brewers' price range, and their price range just got a little bit more expansive. The team had interest in Flaherty at the trade deadline, and their reputation for boosting pitchers' value in various ways would surely work in their favor if Flaherty ends up considering several offers of roughly the same shape and size. Bringing him in and trading Aaron Civale to a team without the wherewithal to compete for top starters could even leave the Crew with more long-term talent on hand, as well as being better-positioned to compete in the short term.

The other high-profile free agent whose market seems amorphous and undeveloped is left fielder Jurickson Profar. That positional designation doesn't exactly mark him as a natural fit for the Crew, but in fact, the smoothly athletic Profar is versatile enough to play some first base, some second, and some third, in addition to the corner outfield posts. He batted .280/.380/.459 in 2024, and as a switch-hitter, he could be a balancing piece to cover up the matchup vulnerabilities of Rhys Hoskins, Brice Turang, and Caleb Durbin, all in turns. 

While this change of direction in short-term broadcast plans is not especially good news for fans on its own, it could be a vehicle for good news over the balance of the offseason. The Cubs have at least begun to close the yawning gap the Brewers had opened between themselves and the rest of the NL Central over the last two seasons. In order to keep that gap healthy and secure a long-term playoff position, the Crew needs to be proactive and take advantage of any opportunity to close their own gap—the one between the Cubs' annual revenues and their own. Taking a bit more money to make a deeply imperfect TV situation a bit more so could turn out to be a good thing, if the team uses that money to improve their roster through the same ruthless opportunism they've shown so many other times over the last decade.