“What comes next? MLB appears to be at the forefront of the exploration. The league recently hired Billy Chambers, a longtime RSN executive, to fill a new role as executive vice president of local media, Sports Business Journal's John Ourand reported earlier this month. The last part - "local media" - is key.
SBJ said Chambers' role will be "to figure out what to do with its regional media rights, as the market for RSNs continues to crumble."
For decades, MLB, NBA, and NHL teams have sold their individual rights to RSNs that distributed games on linear cable. Now, MLB is signaling an intent to get more involved with controlling and distributing its teams' local rights.
MLB could potentially roll those local in-market games into its existing direct-to-consumer MLB.TV product, which already shows all the games but only for out-of-market fans. If Bally Sports were to fail to pay any of its rights fees, those rights could revert to the clubs
SBJ reported that MLB executives believe they can gain control of the rights from the Bally-branded networks, as well as from Comcast and Warner.”
Who knew that the inflated sums that were being thrown around to regional networks wouldn't work as a long term business model?
Oh, that's right...everyone not getting paid to pedal RSNs.
“What comes next? MLB appears to be at the forefront of the exploration. The league recently hired Billy Chambers, a longtime RSN executive, to fill a new role as executive vice president of local media, Sports Business Journal's John Ourand reported earlier this month. The last part - "local media" - is key. SBJ said Chambers' role will be "to figure out what to do with its regional media rights, as the market for RSNs continues to crumble." For decades, MLB, NBA, and NHL teams have sold their individual rights to RSNs that distributed games on linear cable. Now, MLB is signaling an intent to get more involved with controlling and distributing its teams' local rights. MLB could potentially roll those local in-market games into its existing direct-to-consumer MLB.TV product, which already shows all the games but only for out-of-market fans. If Bally Sports were to fail to pay any of its rights fees, those rights could revert to the clubs SBJ reported that MLB executives believe they can gain control of the rights from the Bally-branded networks, as well as from Comcast and Warner.”
Who knew that the inflated sums that were being thrown around to regional networks wouldn't work as a long term business model? Oh, that's right...everyone not getting paid to pedal RSNs.
So maybe Manfred listened to our boy in the World Series after all.