Major League Baseball is experiencing a bit of a comeback as nearly all of its key business metrics are up. Attendance and television ratings are rising. And MLB is keying in on new television and streaming deals with multiple partners after the abrupt end to their Sunday Night Baseball deal with ESPN. And the next frontier just might be local rights.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has made it clear that he is interested in pulling together all local rights from around the league for fans to access and, more importantly, for the league to be able to sell to a streaming platform. ESPN has signaled many times that they’re interested in bringing local rights to their new DTC product, so there seems to be interest both from baseball and potential partners.
But one of the stumbling blocks to such a deal is the megalith local networks that big-market franchises have built for themselves. However, one of those key franchises is signaling support for the idea.
Boston Red Sox President Sam Kennedy told Sports Business Journal this week that he supports Major League Baseball bringing those rights together, even with the team having an 80% stake in their local network, NESN.
“The economics will take care of themselves if you build a product that the consumers love, need, want and can access. So the focus really needs to be on the customer and the fan, and the economics will flow from that,” Kennedy said while acknowledging the process is complicated. “It’s a big puzzle, and I think it’s been great to see the industry come together to try to pull this off. You’d like to have a scenario where everyone is working together on this to make sure all the games are available.”
[…]
“The incentive is that first of all the RSNs and the local linear platform is going to live and survive for a long time,” Kennedy said. “NESN is going strong. Marquee Sports Network is going strong. YES Network is going strong. But it’s about everyone working together to figure out how many games should be local, how many games should be broadcast and streamed globally, and it’s a very exciting exercise. And we have a great local business, but we just want to make sure that the diaspora of Red Sox fans, Cubs fans, Yankee fans, Dodgers fans, Giants fans, Brewers fans can all get to us quickly and in a way where there’s not a ton of friction.”
In an interview with CNBC’s Alex Sherman, Los Angeles Dodgers president Stan Kasten also signaled future support where was bullish on what centralized local rights would mean for fans.
“I think those ideas are really good ideas and could really spell a terrific new era for all of our fans, when the day comes that there aren’t blackouts, when everyone can see every game that they want no matter where they’re located. I don’t know exactly how it’s going to play out for every individual team including ours. But I think we endorse those goals, and we’ll be looking forward to active participation in whatever is the best solution for baseball.”
Pooling all of these local rights together would be a watershed moment for Major League Baseball and American professional sports as a whole. It could conceivably bring all MLB games under one umbrella, both for in-market and out-of-market fans as one neat and tidy package. (Of course, getting rid of blackouts would be a major part of that as well.) However, teams like the Red Sox, Dodgers, and Yankees will need assurances that it will be worth their while in forgoing the gazillions of dollars they make from their local television deals and networks. That’s especially true if it even leads to some kind of revenue distribution to lessen the gap between baseball’s haves and have nots.
Rob Manfred is far from perfect as a commissioner. But he navigated ESPN opting out of their deal by finding a new agreement that keeps baseball on the network while bringing in new partners like Netflix and NBC. The once-polarizing rule changes have almost unanimously improved the product on the field and sped up the game. And if MLB can succeed in bringing all of these local pieces together to form a complete fan product, it could be another transformational moment.
About Matt Yoder