Flipping on Bally Sports San Diego must be a surreal experience, these days. The regional sports network (RSN) had been the broadcasting home of the San Diego Padres until May 31, when a missed broadcasting rights payment allowed MLB to reclaim the team's broadcasting rights from Bally Sports’ parent company Diamond Sports Group (DSG).

Related: Where Can You Watch San Diego Padres Games Now That MLB Has Taken Over Broadcasts?

According to reporting from Sports Business Journal, the initial results of that move have been encouraging from the league’s point of view. SBJ cites numbers from Nielsen provided by Playfly Sports, which indicate that the Padres averaged 51,352 viewers per game for its three contests between Monday, June 5 and Wednesday, June 7. That’s right in line with the 52,464 fans per game who tuned in when the Padres were still on Bally Sports in June 2022.

Ideally, that number will grow even larger over time, as more customers realize they now have access to Padres games and they figure out how to watch the games. Bally Sports RSNs are only available with select providers, whereas the Friars’ games are now available with all of the major cable providers in the San Diego area now that they’ve left Bally Sports. Users will want to look for the “San Diego Padres Alternative” (SDPA) channel on their selected pay-TV provider to find live games in the San Diego market.

The figures must be encouraging to officials and executives from other leagues who are wary about their team moving away from an established RSN. Yet that shift is coming; none of the major sports leagues are committed to Bally Sports in the long term, and Major League Baseball is fighting tooth and nail in bankruptcy court to get as many of its teams as possible off Bally Sports RSNs, as quickly as possible.

Thus far, Diamond Sports Group has been unwilling to play ball. The company has signaled it may start shedding more MLB contracts, but only those its number crunchers have deemed unprofitable. Other clubs whose broadcasting rights still show a profit for DSG will likely be held onto for as long as it can.

For the Padres, however, it’s full steam ahead. Playfly Sports COO Craig Sloan, whose company’s sales division Home Team Sports represents all RSNs in the United States, says there’s no reason to think the success of Padres games now that they’re off Bally Sports San Diego won’t continue.

“The word that comes to mind is ‘shocking,’” he said of the initial ratings for Padres games on SDPA. “There’s got to be a larger set of data to say this is actually sustainable, but I don’t know why it wouldn’t be. At the end of the day, it should be a great indicator.”