Sixty years ago, baseball commissioner Ford Frick received a telegram from a Wisconsin lawmaker. Congressman Henry Royce, concerned that the Milwaukee Braves would defect to Atlanta for the promise of a bigger television contract, proposed a solution. If all Major League Baseball teams split the TV money, the Braves might stay.
According to the Associated Press, Mr. Frick responded in the summer of 1964 that “the idea of pooling all television license fees is not feasible or acceptable at this time,” but that it was “worth considering in the future.” It is said that
Now, in 2024, that conversation has arrived. Commissioner Rob Manfred and some baseball owners are talking more seriously than ever about nationalizing baseball's television rights. That's not because of relocation, but because of cord-cutting, the collapse of some traditional regional sports networks, and a simultaneous battle for streaming supremacy from Netflix, Amazon, and other streamers that has left sports leagues and rights holders in the lurch. is undergoing a chaotic reorganization.
For some baseball owners and executives, primarily in smaller markets, the best way to grow media revenue over the long term is to centralize contracting and broadcast regular season broadcasts for all 30 teams from there. We believe there is a possibility of selling it as a single streaming package. . Others in the game, especially those on the teams that make the most money, are vehemently opposed to relinquishing power over their rights.
The bar for such a change is very high, but it's worth noting that it's even being considered. Ending local media rights in baseball would be one of the most fundamental changes imaginable in the turbulent world of sports television. Naturally, that possibility is debatable.
“As the local media landscape evolves, we will continue to evaluate the best model for our company,” Manfred said in a statement. The Athletic. “Our course of action will be determined by the club, who are the final decision-makers under our terms and conditions.”
MLB has long had various domestic media deals, such as the postseason with networks like FOX and TBS, and Sunday night games during the regular season with ESPN, but the bulk of its regular season inventory has always been Managed by individual teams. The same goes for choosing which TV stations to partner with within your home market. (New York fans can sign up for MLB.tv and watch games other than the Mets and Yankees, since headquarters already controls each team's “off-market” rights.)
Repealing local rights could eliminate many of the blackout regulations that have frustrated fans. But not all clubs think Manfred's office can make better use of this right than he could personally.
But it is the dollar that is most divisive. Regardless of how the Commissioner develops the rights, the question is how the proceeds will be distributed, in equal shares or otherwise. According to Forbes magazine, the New York Yankees received an estimated $143 million in rights fees in 2022, far more than the $57 million a team like the Colorado Rockies received in the same year. Exceeds. After all, it's a rehash of baseball's classic drama: big market versus small market.
“The future is all on the table because it's so unknown,” Sam Kennedy, president of the big-market Boston Red Sox, said during spring training. “Problems always arise when teams in large markets have different views than teams in small markets. At the end of the day, what we have to focus on is the larger It's profit.”
A new era in sports broadcasting has just begun, and change is happening rapidly. On Wednesday, Netflix and the NFL announced that the streamer will broadcast a new Christmas Day game. Netflix pays him about $75 million per game.
Elsewhere on Wednesday, the other three major U.S. men's sports leagues, MLB, NBA and NHL, were in court as one of their most important broadcast partners, Diamond Sports Group, faced bankruptcy and a dispute with a transportation company. He claimed in court that the ship was in trouble. Famous cable company Comcast. More than a dozen MLB teams aired on Diamond's Barry-branded channels this month are no longer available to Comcast's roughly 13.6 million TV customers.
And on Thursday, FOX, Warner Bros. Discovery and Hulu announced the name of their upcoming sports package: “venu.”
For the baseball world, the prospect of big paychecks from streaming companies is understandably appealing. Regional sports networks have traditionally paid large sums of money upfront to teams. Streamers may behave differently, preferring a risk-reward model. In other words, the more people flock to your content, the more money you get paid. But in the long run, as streamers jockey for position, Manfred believes Amazon and its ilk will pay more in aggregate for fragmented content than traditional RSNs are paying today. I might bet that it is.
In other words, the central debate is whether baseball can flourish as a “national'' sport. Ironically, the national pastime is often considered a local game.
“Like almost everything in American life, it's all about money,” former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent said in a phone interview. “The money is very heavily local. If you live in New York, trying to get Seattle interested in a game that flies to San Diego or something like that isn't going to work.”
MLB just sold packages for Sunday morning games to Roku. The Athletic Thursday's report said the amount was $10 million a year. Previously, the Peacocks paid $30 million per season for the same package. Unlike Peacock, Roku doesn't require a paid subscription, but MLB's rate reduction still disappointed some stakeholders.
“That's clear. There's no national package,” said one sports executive frankly, speaking on condition of anonymity. “People only want to pay for premium teams.”
One sport that has long thrived on a states' rights model is the National Football League. When Flick made his comments in 1964, the NFL was already negotiating contracts as one organization.
But sports were in a different place then than they are now. The NFL schedule has always offered far fewer games per week compared to baseball's nightly rhythm.
“Football's local television deals weren't worth much initially because inventory was low,” says James Walker, professor emeritus of communications at St. Xavier College in Chicago and author of a book on the history of baseball broadcasting. said. “What this means is that at the time the (football) teams established their television policies, they were much closer to parity. The concept of big market teams versus small market teams has always been the case in Major League Baseball. Like, it just didn't have the same meaning in the NFL.”
The movement to nationalize soccer's rights is often credited to Pete Rozelle, the giant sports commissioner who took office in 1960. Mr. Walker said Mr. Rozelle's predecessor, Bert Bell, was in fact noteworthy in that regard.
Whether Manfred would like to be remembered as baseball's Rozelle or Bell is one of the more interesting questions as he moves towards his scheduled retirement in 2029. It is one.
Manfred's mission is likely simple. Make sure to make the most money possible, either by jumping headlong into the local media business or by outsourcing, which has long been the norm. But to bring about substantive change, 30 bosses need to be roped in, and changing the rights structure could be a bridge too far.
“In baseball, it's very difficult for a commissioner to get owners to work for the collective good,” Walker said. “The idea that at this stage the Yankees would suddenly agree to pool their local rights in some kind of shared structure, it's not impossible that that could happen.
“But that basically means the Yankees have to figure out a way to get paid what they think is right. And you're going to go against the grain. Back in the days of radio. 90 years of history will be told.”
Existing contracts between teams and regional sports networks are in major trouble. Some teams have contracts with his RSN that run through the 2030s. These contracts often promised him exclusivity to RSN, preventing MLB from conveniently bundling games into simulcasts.
So even if the teams agreed tomorrow to nationalize their local rights and turned their current contracts over to the league office, MLB would have to wait until they expire before using those rights in new ways. or else an early termination would have to be negotiated. to those trades. For example, the Dodgers' television contract runs through 2038.
The league may also have to negotiate changes with the players' association, since revenue sharing between teams is done through collective bargaining. This means that these issues could come to a head in the next round of CBA negotiations in 2026. The MLBPA declined to comment.
Other theories exist about the direction baseball and other sports should go. Perhaps it would be more profitable to develop packages grouped by market rather than by sport, such as New York's bundle across various leagues.
Typically, a three-quarters vote allows owners to change the sports bylaws. But if support for the rights change is less than 100 percent, MLB could find itself in dangerous territory. If owners feel the league has inappropriately assumed what it's worth, lawsuits could ensue.
It's a delicate distinction, but MLB could launch some kind of small national streaming package with perhaps half the teams participating without changing the actual rights system. Currently, some teams do not have exclusive contracts with his RSN, freeing up the league to quickly bundle him.Manfred has expressed interest in doing this as early as 2025, but there is not enough of a team to work together. at this point For a viable product. However, the situation could change later this year if Diamond Sports Group is unable to emerge from bankruptcy.
Asked in February whether the idea of moving away from local rights would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, President Kennedy said: “The world is changing rapidly.”
“Consumers need instant access to our products and games anytime, anywhere,” Kennedy said. “You can't make it harder.”
(Top photo of Manfred: Mike Carlson / MLB Photos via Getty Images)