Major League Baseball announced on Tuesday that it will create and manage local broadcasts for the Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers, and Minnesota Twins next year. These three teams had contracts with Diamond Sports Group that ended with the regular season.
The Texas Rangers, whose agreement also ended last month, stated they will no longer work with Diamond and are looking into options for next season.
With the addition of the Guardians, Brewers, and Twins, MLB will oversee the production and distribution for at least six teams by 2025.
This year, MLB took over the broadcasts for the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks, and it will include the Colorado Rockies starting this year.
Rick Schlesinger, president of business operations for the Brewers, mentioned that more teams might join MLB by the start of next season.
“This has been a long process. It’s a very deliberative process,” he said. “We’ve done this through a lot of work, a lot of analysis. I think this is going to be a huge game changer for us, for our content.”
By taking control of the broadcasts, MLB aims to expand the market reach of its teams by at least 2 million households in each area.
For instance, the Diamondbacks increased their availability from 930,000 households on a regional sports network to 5.6 million homes through local cable, satellite, and direct-to-consumer streaming.
“With the media landscape continuing to evolve, Major League Baseball is committed to serving our fans by ensuring they can see their favorite clubs, removing blackouts where we can, and growing the reach of our games,” said Noah Garden, MLB deputy commissioner for business and media.
The Twins faced criticism in Minnesota for reducing their player payroll for 2024 after winning the division and their first postseason series in 22 years, especially due to the lower rights fee from Diamond.
Although they will lose the rights fee entirely with this new MLB-produced model, team president Dave St. Peter stated that this announcement will not impact player spending for the upcoming season.
“We’ve spent a tremendous amount of time with Major League Baseball trying to better understand this marketplace, trying to better understand what a model like this will provide to the team.
We also have studied closely what’s happened in San Diego, in Arizona, and in Colorado. We’ve gotten comfortable in those economics. They are where they are,” St. Peter said.
“We do expect that there will be a reduction in local revenue coming to the Twins in 2025. I think that’s a fact. That said, over the long haul we have tremendous confidence in our content and believe, while maybe we’ll take a dip for ’25, that over time the viewership and those economics related to that viewership will increase.”
Cleveland games were available to about 1.45 million households on its regional sports network. That number is expected to increase by 235% to 4.86 million households. Minnesota’s reach will grow by 307%, from 1.08 million homes to 4.4 million.
Schlesinger said the Brewers had 800,000 households able to receive games this past season, but he also expects significant growth with the new model.
“From a fan perspective, it’s great because you’re going to have total access and no blackouts,” he said. “There’s a lot of staffing, a lot of infrastructure, a lot of decisions have to be made, a lot of people to be hired, a lot of sponsors to contact.
This is the right time to do this. It’s a good jumping point, platform to make sure when the calendar turns to 2025, we’re already fully immersed in this and that we know when the first game starts, that we’re ready to go and the product’s going to be outstanding.”
MLB may take over more teams as Diamond Sports Group continues its bankruptcy process. The largest owner of regional sports networks in the U.S. might only be handling Atlanta Braves games in 2025.
The operator of the Bally Sports regional networks presented its reorganization plan in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston last week.
As part of this plan, Diamond aims to void the contracts of the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays and try to renegotiate the deals of five franchises that partially own their regional sports networks — the Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins, and St. Louis Cardinals.
St. Peter mentioned that he expects more teams to join this model in the future.
“Starting to build that direct-to-consumer foundation, which clearly is the future of the way our games will be distributed — it’s time to get on with that and we’re excited about that,” St. Peter said.
“Our ownership understands the consequences of that, but I think over time there’s way more upside than short-term downside.”
A final hearing on Diamond’s reorganization plan is set for Nov. 14. Diamond also holds the rights to 13 NBA and eight NHL teams.
Diamond Sports Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group purchased the regional sports networks from The Walt Disney Co. for nearly $10 billion in 2019. Disney was required by the Department of Justice to sell the networks for its acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets to be approved.
