MLB.TV Sees Record-Breaking Opening Day Viewership; Are RSN Failures Driving Fans to Baseball Streaming?
The Major League Baseball season is underway, and this year’s Opening Day festivities came with an extra bit of good news for the league. According to reporting from Sports Pro Media, the MLB saw a record-breaking 172 million minutes watched on its out-of-market game streaming platform MLB.TV.
That’s a jump of 42% from the platform’s previous record of 121 million minutes. MLB.TV can be used by fans across the country to stream any MLB game as long as it’s not being broadcast locally on TV, or being offered on a national platform like ESPN.
Some in the sports media world, such as Front Office Sports, have attributed this jump to new rule changes instituted by MLB this year. These include a pitch clock, as well as bigger bases to increase the rate of play and encourage more base-stealing attempts. But can those changes alone account for a nearly 50% increase in the amount of time spent streaming Opening Day games on MLB.TV?
It’s likely that the worsening disarray of regional sports networks (RSNs) is helping drive fans to MLB.TV. While RSNs, by definition, are only available to viewers in the region of a specific team, and MLB.TV is specifically for games out of a viewer’s local market, the entire RSN model’s recent failures could still be playing a part. These sports-focused channels all over the country are in trouble, and some companies that own them are deciding they’re ready to throw in the towel altogether. Warner Bros. Discovery, for instance, sent letters to all the MLB teams covered by AT&T SportsNet RSNs telling them that it was getting out of the RSN business before the start of the season.
Bally Sports and its network of 19 RSNs are currently in bankruptcy court, trying to figure out a way to continue doing business in the face of increasing broadcast rights fees and decreasing subscriber pools on pay TV. It’s highly likely that some baseball fans have decided not to wait for the RSN drama to continue playing out, and have simply opted to watch games on MLB.TV instead.
If the RSN situation continues to deteriorate, there could be more record-breaking streaming days ahead for MLB. An unconfirmed report from mid-March suggested that Bally Sports’ parent company Diamond Sports Group was ready to reject its four most expensive MLB contracts and that the league was preparing to stream Diamondbacks, Reds, Guardians and Padres games in-market for free on MLB.TV. If that happens at any point during the season, it will certainly mean a new influx of viewers to the service.
The RSN situation cannot be the only reason that ratings jumped so high for MLB.TV this year, especially since it can only be used to watch out-of-market games. One must also look to the new features added to the platform this year, including the ability to stream over 7,000 minor league games, as well as the new Gameday mode that integrates advanced stats and analytics into the stream.
It’s a long season ahead for MLB, but the initial results have to be encouraging for league executives. Despite all the issues MLB is having with its RSN partners, its out-of-market streaming platform MLB.TV is seeing record numbers, and the league is crossing its fingers that those results continue through the rest of the summer and fall.
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.