MLB commisioner Manfred wants a national baseball streaming option by 2028
A platform with all 30 teams would end the problem of local blackouts forever, but Manfred knows there are significant challenges to that plan.
As expected, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is quite relieved about the clarity provided by the end of Diamond Sports Group’s bankruptcy proceedings. Diamond won approval for its reorganization plan last week, and is now taking the final steps necessary to break out of Chapter 11 protections, and still holds the local rights to six MLB clubs. Manfred discussed his feelings regarding Diamond and his long-held dream of offering a nationalized baseball streaming service with no blackouts at the MLB owners’ meetings on Wednesday.
Key Details:
- Manfred said MLB will have a lot of “flexibility” to explore nationalized streaming options starting in 2028.
- All teams partnered with Diamond see their rights revert back to the respective clubs by that year.
- Getting big-market teams who own shares in their respective regional sports networks will be a challenge.
Manfred has ambitious plans for his league and has long hoped to offer all MLB fans a streaming option to watch their local team without the blackouts that have plagued the sport for years. The goal is to eliminate the issues that have made it difficult to watch the sport at a time when it seemed other leagues were dedicated to making games available in as many places as possible.
At the owners’ meetings on Wednesday, Manfred said that the league would have “flexibility” in 2028 to start exploring options for such a service. He confirmed to The Athletic on Tuesday that all deals for Diamond-partnered clubs end by 2028 or sooner, which is a big reason why he is specifically targeting that year. The league could have around two-thirds of the local rights to MLB’s 30 teams available for a streaming service, and he doesn’t want to waste that opportunity to expand access to the game.
“I’d like to have all the rights available,” Manfred said. “I’d like to talk to the people who are buyers. I’d like to cut them up into packages and sell them, as many of them as possible, nationally, and then have a plan to deal with what’s left over.”
From those words, it appears that Manfred doesn’t want to simply create an in-market version of MLB.TV that the league will sell directly to consumers. That is more or less the strategy the league is using for seven teams in the upcoming season; games will be available on cable in their respective markets, but will also be offered on special, in-market plans of MLB.TV, which is normally an out-of-market service.
The dream sounds like a bold vision and would require buy-in from all teams in the league. Manfred wants the league office to take over responsibilities for selling local broadcast and streaming rights, duties which now reside with the teams. That would require approval from owners and the player’s union. Many MLB owners also have a stake in the regional sports network (RSN) that broadcasts their team, which could complicate matters.
These owners will be very hard to convince to forego the revenue they’re making for themselves from those channels, an issue Manfred acknowledged Wednesday.
“Everything that we do, we believe we have to convince the clubs that it’s in their economic interests to do that, and a big piece of it is the changes that have taken place in the media landscape. We had a long conversation about this today,” Manfred said. “More games on national outlets is an important key to maximizing your revenue. Once you realize that, you can begin to build a consensus around the idea that we need to be more national, and we’ve worked really hard to build that consensus.”
The commissioner knows full well that professional baseball has fallen behind other sports in terms of popularity in the United States, and limited access to the sport on TV is playing a part. His plans to fix the problem are ambitious, but they’ll require large changes that will likely face significant resistance from some MLB owners.
MLB.TV
MLB.TV is the official streaming service of Major League Baseball. You can see every out-of-market game live or on demand, and choose home or away TV and radio feeds. The app allows fans to watch up to four games simultaneously on the same screen through their Multi-view feature. MLB.TV can be added to your Sling TV or Prime Video subscription.