Sinclair(Bally's Sport) nearing a deal for NBA streaming rights for direct to consumer offering

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There needs to be an end to separate regional networks.

MLB, NBA, and NHL should stop allowing franchises to sell their own rights to such local/regional networks. It should all have to go through the league, who all already have national partners in distribution that know how to properly regionalize the content perfectly well and are already in a vast majority of the nation's TV households.


Yeah, right. Once a thing is established, it's hard to change.

The Yankees would probably rather leave the MLB than give up their special status as emperors of baseball.
 

the real question is how much longer does cable TV survive as an entity.

found some stats online:

  • It’s estimated that a total of 4.9 million people will cut the cord in 2022, bringing the total number of cord-cutters up to 55.1 million (or 20.8% of the U.S.’s adult population).
  • Approximately 10.3% of current cable and satellite TV subscribers will cut the cord in 2022.
  • It’s expected that the number of cable TV subscribers is expected to fall from 71 million people in 2020 to 56 million in 2025.
  • Streaming service industry revenue hit around $171 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $252 billion in 2025, nearly doubling in four years.
  • U.S. households’ cable and satellite TV penetration rate is expected to decline from 85% in 2017 to 79% in 2030.

the trend continues as people move from cable TV to streaming. every person who cuts the cord is one less person shelling out $9 a month for ESPN as part of their cable bill. if 5 million people cut the cord in 2022, that amounts to over $500-Million in lost fees for ESPN. (estimated) cable TV customers and advertisers have historically been paying the freight for all of these big media rights deals. what happens when the revenue isn't there anymore?
 

forever a gopher said:
So they’re $8.1 billion in the hole, and the answer to getting out of said hole? Borrowing $600 million more to develop an app. You can’t make it up.
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Not that I'm defending them, as I hope they fail because this isn't good for the consumer, but wasn't UFC in a big financial loss and they decided to come up with the Ultimate Fighter reality TV series and then UFC took off and they are very successful now - all because they tried something new when they were about to fail.

So it can work....
 

short ornery norwegian said:
the trend continues as people move from cable TV to streaming. every person who cuts the cord is one less person shelling out $9 a month for ESPN as part of their cable bill. if 5 million people cut the cord in 2022, that amounts to over $500-Million in lost fees for ESPN. (estimated) cable TV customers and advertisers have historically been paying the freight for all of these big media rights deals. what happens when the revenue isn't there anymore?
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Not really. YouTube TV etc. pay ESPN rights fees too. YouTube/Hulut etc are no longer really cheaper than cable/Satellite. It's now just a difference of which line it comes into your house on. I do expect their to be cable/streaming mergers in the near future.
 

MLB forms committee to consider economic issues including loss of revenue from RSN's.

from the AP:

Concerned about a possible bankruptcy for the company that owns local broadcasting rights to 14 of the 30 Major League Baseball teams, the league has formed a new economic study committee that will gather next week at the owners' meetings in Palm Beach, Florida.

The existence of the committee was disclosed to The Associated Press by a person familiar with the planning who spoke on condition of anonymity because no announcement had been made.

The committee also will examine revenue disparity among MLB clubs.

Los Angeles Dodgers chairman Mark Walter and Detroit Tigers chairman Chris Ilitch are among the committee members, the person said.

Baseball executives have said in recent weeks that the sport needs to prepare in the event that rights-fee payments are not made by Diamond Sports Group, the subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group that operates networks under the name Bally Sports. Cable networks have lost subscribers and revenue in recent years due to cord-cutting.

In addition to the Twins, Diamond owns rights to the broadcasts for the Arizona Diamondbacks, Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Guardians, Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins, Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals, San Diego Padres, Tampa Bay Rays and Texas Rangers.
 


Bump - that noise you hear is the next shoe dropping.

From the AP:

Diamond Sports Group, the largest owner of regional sports networks, will miss a $140 million interest payment next week, which would put the company closer to filing for bankruptcy.

Two people familiar with the financing plans told The Associated Press that the missed interest payments would begin a 30-day grace period, where Diamond Sports Group could negotiate with creditors and restructure its debt. Another avenue could be a pre-arranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

Diamond owns 19 networks under the Bally Sports banner. Those networks have the rights to 42 professional teams — 14 baseball, 16 NBA and 12 NHL.

Bloomberg reported last month that Diamond Sports Group has an overall debt of $8.6 billion.

Sinclair Broadcast Group — which owns Diamond — bought the regional sports networks from Walt Disney Company for nearly $10 billion in 2019. Disney was required by the Department of Justice to sell the networks in order for its acquisition of 21st Century Fox's film and television assets to be approved.

Diamond has nearly $1 billion in rights payments, mostly to baseball teams, due in the first quarter this year. Commissioner Rob Manfred told the AP earlier this week after an owners' meeting that MLB would be in a position to step in if Diamond was unable to broadcast games.

"Our goal would be to make games available not only within the traditional cable bundle but on the digital side, as well," Manfred said. "What we do is largely dependent on how Diamond and the creditors play their cards, what they decide to do."

Bally Sports has tried to offset the effects of cord cutting by offering a Bally Sports+ digital package, where fans in some markets would be able to stream their team's games.
 

howeda7 said:
It's now just a difference of which line it comes into your house on.
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This in of itself is still a very important distinction, and a very important point of progress.

A household was literally held hostage to laws giving your city the legal authority to enter into a monopoly with some cable provider, and you having to pay them to have TV programs brought into your home on their proprietary network using their proprietary hardware.


Now TV comes from the internet, which you can gain access to in a number of competing physical ways, not excluding landlines (which in my opinion are still superior to wireless, but those days may too be numbered), and access the programming via software included and built-in directly on your screen.
 
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we'll see what happens if or when Diamond misses a payment to MLB.

I just don't see how Diamond is going to be able to re-structure that debt.

and unlike the car industry or the big banks, I don't think the government is going to bail them out.
 




howeda7 said:
thestreamable.com

MLB Commissioner: League Ready to Take Over Local Broadcasts from Bally Sports; Wants to Make More Games Available to Stream

Sinclair Broadcasting Group (SBG) and its sports vertical Diamond Sports Group (DSG) seem to be down to their final strike. DSG has upcoming broadcasting rights payments to Major League Baseball that it’s in …
thestreamable.com thestreamable.com
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Gonna have to get creative to replace that $40 mil in annual revenue. I don’t see how a digital offering comes close to making that kind of money locally.

The league should drop local tv deals entirely and sell one package like MLS just did but keep national tv blackouts. Too much money to be made from national TV. MLS didn’t have that luxury.
 
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mnsportsgeek said:
Gonna have to get creative to replace that $40 mil in annual revenue. I don’t see how a digital offering comes close to making that kind of money locally.

The league should drop local tv deals entirely and sell one package like MLS just did but keep national tv blackouts. Too much money to be made from national TV. MLS didn’t have that luxury.
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well, let's say MLB just takes it over. what would it cost?

the current mlb.tv streaming package (which is currently for out-of-market games only) is $25 a month or $140 a year. the "Extra Innings" package - which is available through certain participating cable providers - is similar.

so if they take mlb.tv and add the local games, it's a good bet the price is not going to go down.

leading to the $24,000 question - how much would you be willing to pay to watch the Twins if BSN goes away? I could probably live with $25 a month - but if it was more than that, things get iffy.

context - I get BSN through my cable provider, which pays BSN close to $11 a month in fees per subscriber. so, in essence, I'm paying $11 a month now to watch the Twins. (plus the occasional Wolves and Wild game)
 

short ornery norwegian said:
well, let's say MLB just takes it over. what would it cost?

the current mlb.tv streaming package (which is currently for out-of-market games only) is $25 a month or $140 a year. the "Extra Innings" package - which is available through certain participating cable providers - is similar.

so if they take mlb.tv and add the local games, it's a good bet the price is not going to go down.

leading to the $24,000 question - how much would you be willing to pay to watch the Twins if BSN goes away? I could probably live with $25 a month - but if it was more than that, things get iffy.

context - I get BSN through my cable provider, which pays BSN close to $11 a month in fees per subscriber. so, in essence, I'm paying $11 a month now to watch the Twins. (plus the occasional Wolves and Wild game)
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I'm not a great sample as I benefit from living out of market. I alrady have ESPN+ for soccer, so throw in NHL for no extra cost. I get MLB.TV free through T-Mobile, and I only just this year paid for NBA League pass for the first time. Living out of market can have its perks though it also has many cons as plane tickets are expensive and I like to come back and take in a Loons and Gopher Football at least once a year.

But let's say I was in market and Bally were to dissapear and all the leagues decided to take their video in house, I'd pay $19.99 for the existing content (wild, wolves, twins, etc.) tops if national blackouts were still a thing for "game of the week" and playoffs. Basically what Bally offers now but include the twins. This would require MLB, NHL, and NBA to go into some sort of partnernship together I would imagine. Unlikely.

If MLB, NBA, and NHL all wanted $19.99/each a month for in market streaming. Then I would only be able to justify it there were no national blackouts (like MLS). Meaning I would drop cable entirely (though I'd also need a B1G streaming equivalent in this scenario).

Honestly the best case scenario for me personally would probably be the ability to buy a single game whenever I want across the sports landscape. The only teams I watch religiously are Gopher Football (and basketball when we aren't at rock bottom), and Minnesota United. I'd pay for a season pass for them. Everyone else I probably only need 10 or so games a season and the flexibility to do it spontaneously with the click of a button. I just don't have the time to watch 50+ twins games a year anymore.
 
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The Twins shouldn’t get to have any such thing as “local rights” any more than the U has “local rights” relative to the Big Ten.

The Big Ten owns all rights and negotiates a single package that all members then benefit equally from.

That’s the correct way. That’s how it ought to be in MLB, NBA, and NHL.

There is no such thing anymore as capacity constraints. You can have 10 thousand channels, if you wanted.
 



Gophers_4life said:
The Twins shouldn’t get to have any such thing as “local rights” any more than the U has “local rights” relative to the Big Ten.

The Big Ten owns all rights and negotiates a single package that all members then benefit equally from.

That’s the correct way. That’s how it ought to be in MLB, NBA, and NHL.

There is no such thing anymore as capacity constraints. You can have 10 thousand channels, if you wanted.
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I get what you're saying, but local TV rights are a much bigger deal in baseball. And there are huge discrepancies between teams. according to what I've found online, the Dodgers get close to $230-Million a year from their local TV deal, while the Twins get about $40-Million.

plus, some teams own their own local TV provider, while others have deals with RSN's. The Bally's RSN's have the rights to 14 MLB teams, so over half of the teams in MLB would not be impacted if the Bally's RSN's go under.

coming up with one solution that is "fair" to all the teams would be really tricky.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
I get what you're saying, but local TV rights are a much bigger deal in baseball. And there are huge discrepancies between teams. according to what I've found online, the Dodgers get close to $230-Million a year from their local TV deal, while the Twins get about $40-Million.

plus, some teams own their own local TV provider, while others have deals with RSN's. The Bally's RSN's have the rights to 14 MLB teams, so over half of the teams in MLB would not be impacted if the Bally's RSN's go under.

coming up with one solution that is "fair" to all the teams would be really tricky.
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I don't know how it works exactly, but I have always felt that each team should split half of the local broadcast revenue with the rest of the league.

It's pretty worthless if they don't have an opponent.
 


Ope3 said:
I don't know how it works exactly, but I have always felt that each team should split half of the local broadcast revenue with the rest of the league.

It's pretty worthless if they don't have an opponent.
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They should do that, but the Yankees and Dodgers will never agree to it.
 

JimmyJamesMD said:
www.espn.com

Manfred: MLB has broadcast plan if DSG bankrupt

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said the league is "prepared no matter what happens" to Diamond Sports Group "to make sure that games are available to fans in their local markets."
www.espn.com www.espn.com
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My guess is they would just clear the MLB Extra Innings channel for local teams on in-market cable/satellite if the provider will just give them a reasonable chunk of the per subscriber fee they are currently paying Bally.
 

howeda7 said:
They should do that, but the Yankees and Dodgers will never agree to it.
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2 owners out of 30 get to dictate to the rest?

Unless it has to be by unanimous vote .... then no.


Have fun playing each other 162 times.
 

So, just talking about the Twins for a second:

to actually produce a MLB game TV program, takes a good amount of talent and equipment, right?


I don't know, but I'm guessing that the Twins don't actually own that themselves? Or maybe, the equipment is considered "tied to" the stadium, or pieces of the stadium themselves. Cameras, cables, control room, editing computers, etc.


My point is, either Bally's North (whatever the legal entity is) owns all that stuff, or perhaps it belongs to the stadium .... but there has to be a crew to run all that, certainly not excluding the on-air talent.


If all that talent (at the least, if not also the equipment) is going kaput ...... MLB can't just replicate that x 14 teams, out of nothing.

They can provide channels for those productions go out into the the world on ... but I doubt they can just take over the productions themselves?
 

Gophers_4life said:
2 owners out of 30 get to dictate to the rest?

Unless it has to be by unanimous vote .... then no.


Have fun playing each other 162 times.
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Like a lot of things in baseball, there are a couple teams at the bottom being an absolute anchor, a few teams at the top skewing all the numbers, and then a large portion somewhere clustered in the middle.

If you take out the bottom two teams (don't know why the Jays numbers aren't listed), the middle 2/3rds are reasonably close.

Of course, as a lot of the "baseball is doing just fine and should stay status-quo" people will point out that of the six top teams that make $100MM+/year, 4 of them weren't good this year, and some of them (Cubs, ChiSox, Angels) have been generally bad for a while. It's the same argument when you look at WS participants and how they're actually reasonably spread out over numerous teams, and not necessarily clustered to the biggest spenders. Of course, I don't buy those arguments, as baseball is stuck in it's own world and doesn't operate like any other major sport. It also, uncoincidentally, is the one that is struggling the most in maintaining fans.

Capture66.JPG
 

forever a gopher said:
Like a lot of things in baseball, there are a couple teams at the bottom being an absolute anchor, a few teams at the top skewing all the numbers, and then a large portion somewhere clustered in the middle.

If you take out the bottom two teams (don't know why the Jays numbers aren't listed), the middle 2/3rds are reasonably close.

Of course, as a lot of the "baseball is doing just fine and should stay status-quo" people will point out that of the six top teams that make $100MM+/year, 4 of them weren't good this year, and some of them (Cubs, ChiSox, Angels) have been generally bad for a while. It's the same argument when you look at WS participants and how they're actually reasonably spread out over numerous teams, and not necessarily clustered to the biggest spenders. Of course, I don't buy those arguments, as baseball is stuck in it's own world and doesn't operate like any other major sport. It also, uncoincidentally, is the one that is struggling the most in maintaining fans.

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Looking at the ownership %, I forgot just how bad the Orioles screwed over the Nationals to waive their territory rights. 80% for me, 20% for you. For 20 years. I guess karma took care of it on the field.
 

Gophers_4life said:
So, just talking about the Twins for a second:

to actually produce a MLB game TV program, takes a good amount of talent and equipment, right?


I don't know, but I'm guessing that the Twins don't actually own that themselves? Or maybe, the equipment is considered "tied to" the stadium, or pieces of the stadium themselves. Cameras, cables, control room, editing computers, etc.


My point is, either Bally's North (whatever the legal entity is) owns all that stuff, or perhaps it belongs to the stadium .... but there has to be a crew to run all that, certainly not excluding the on-air talent.


If all that talent (at the least, if not also the equipment) is going kaput ...... MLB can't just replicate that x 14 teams, out of nothing.

They can provide channels for those productions go out into the the world on ... but I doubt they can just take over the productions themselves?
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I believe the Twins produce the game broadcasts themselves, and Bremer and Morneau etc. are employed by them,unless that changed recently. As I said before, when they folded Victory Sports, they were back on FS North the next day.
 

the irony is that the Twins had the right idea with Victory Sports - owning and operating their own RSN. but, you could argue that it was ahead of its time, and they could not reach carriage agreements with the cable providers. If Victory could have gotten on enough cable systems, the Twins would probably be in a much better situation today.

on the immediate situation: as long as Diamond is going through the bankruptcy process, I don't think anything will change. the tipping point would be if Diamond is unable to make payments to any of the pro teams that it covers. If that happens, all bets are off.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
the irony is that the Twins had the right idea with Victory Sports - owning and operating their own RSN. but, you could argue that it was ahead of its time, and they could not reach carriage agreements with the cable providers. If Victory could have gotten on enough cable systems, the Twins would probably be in a much better situation today.
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They screwed up two ways. They tried to do a deal with the Wolves to co-own the network, but the Wolves wanted 50/50 and the Twins wanted something like 2/3, because they have more games/higher ratings at the time. Second they should have gone and cut a cheap deal with Dish Network or DirecTV (DirecTV was owned by Fox then so not likely). If folks would have had somewhere to switch to, it would have made the cable companies negotiate. As it was, they didn't have to and just said no.
 

howeda7 said:
I believe the Twins produce the game broadcasts themselves, and Bremer and Morneau etc. are employed by them,unless that changed recently. As I said before, when they folded Victory Sports, they were back on FS North the next day.
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Do you know how this can be found out? I don't know what Victory Sports is.

My (naive perhaps) thinking is that whatever entity you want to call "Bally Sports North" (known previous for some time as "Fox Sports North") owns those contracts, and maybe the equipment too. And the Twins don't actually "do" anything, other than have rights and then sell those rights to some entity that then produces the games and pays the Twins for the ability to do that.

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bally_Sports_North#Origins that seemed to originate as "Midwest Sports Channel" in 1989.
 

Gophers_4life said:
Do you know how this can be found out? I don't know what Victory Sports is.

My (naive perhaps) thinking is that whatever entity you want to call "Bally Sports North" (known previous for some time as "Fox Sports North") owns those contracts, and maybe the equipment too. And the Twins don't actually "do" anything, other than have rights and then sell those rights to some entity that then produces the games and pays the Twins for the ability to do that.

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bally_Sports_North#Origins that seemed to originate as "Midwest Sports Channel" in 1989.
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Victory Sports One (was not is).

Victory Sports One - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
 


Ope3 said:
Victory Sports One (was not is).

Victory Sports One - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
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After a month in which only a tiny percentage of Twins fans could watch games locally, Victory Sports One signed off on May 8. The Twins quickly re-signed with FSN North to placate viewers inconvenienced by the change, and were able to obtain a significant increase in cable revenue over their previous contract with FSN North.

Well, at least that good came out of it for the Twins.
 

One way to pose the question would be: where do Dick Bremer's checks come from?

Bally Sports North? Or the Minnesota Twins?

Tried Googling this info but it does not appear to be out there.
 

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