Red Sox throw weight behind MLB’s local rights plan
Red Sox throw weight behind MLB’s local rights plan
The MLB wants to centralize its local rights by 2028, and one of the most famous teams in the league is buying into the plan.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is highly motivated to bring his league into the 21st Century. Manfred has long held a goal of allowing fans to watch in-market MLB broadcasts on one centralized platform, with no blackouts for customers who are then forced to try and locate a TV package with the channel they need to watch games. The trouble with that plan is that often, big-name clubs with big payrolls are deeply embedded with their regional sports network (RSN) partner, and the money they generate from deals with these channels can be eye-popping. But one of the biggest clubs in the entire league is now lining up to support Manfred’s vision, which could lead to movement from other major clubs on the issue.
Key Details:
- Here comes Beantown: CEO of the Boston Red Sox Sam Kennedy is supportive of a centralized MLB rights platform.
- Confident commish: Manfred sounds bullish on the prospect of getting MLB clubs to send their rights to such a platform.
- What’s in it for me?: MLB teams like the Dodgers, Red Sox, and Yankees have to be incentivized to join.
Boston Red Sox president and CEO Sam Kennedy told Sports Business Journal on Thursday that he officially supported Manfred's goal of uniting all MLB local and national broadcast rights under the league’s control by 2028.
“It’s good for the entire industry,” Kennedy said. “Major League Baseball and the commissioner (Rob Manfred) and (deputy commissioner) Noah (Garden) have been working hard on it for a couple years.
“Our distribution model has been disrupted by technology, and we’ve got these territories, and we’ve got to make sure that our consumers, wherever they are, whether they’re watching the Red Sox in Boston, Nashville or Singapore can easily find our games or consume our games on a device in a format they want,” he continued. “So we’ve been part of trying to help examine how this could come together.”
Having the buy-in of a team as wealthy and prominent as the Red Sox is a huge win for Manfred, especially considering how closely the team is allied with its regional sports network partner. The Red Sox play on NESN, 80% of which is owned by Fenway Sports Group, the same conglomerate that owns the team itself, along with the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Red Sox pull in a great chunk of revenue from that channel, and their willingness to discuss a future where that revenue stream could be interrupted is quite notable.
There still needs to be some incentive to get teams like the Red Sox, the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, and other bluebloods of the league to join a centralized MLB platform that leaves the policy of blacking out games behind. But from Kennedy’s words, it sounds as if the argument MLB is making to owners is resonating.
“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,” the CEO said. “It’s a big puzzle…ut 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.”
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