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/