Major League Baseball announced Tuesday it will produce and distribute local broadcasts for the Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers and Minnesota Twins next year. All three teams had contracts with Diamond Sports Group that expired at the end of the regular season.
The Texas Rangers, whose deal also expired last month, also announced they will no longer be partnering with Diamond. They are assessing their options for next season.
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The addition of the Guardians, Brewers and Twins means MLB will be handling the production and distribution of at least six teams going into 2025.
MLB took over broadcasts of the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks during the 2023 season and the Colorado Rockies this year.
Rick Schlesinger, the president of business operations for the Brewers, said he expects more teams could be partnering with MLB by the opening of next season.
“This has been a long process. It’s a very deliberative process," he said. "We’ve done this through a lot of work, a lot of analysis. I think this is going to be a huge game changer for us, for our content.”
By taking over the broadcasts, MLB expects to increase the market reach of its teams by at least 2 million households in each market. The Diamondbacks went from being available in 930,000 households on a regional sports network to 5.6 million homes through a combination of being on local cable systems, satellite and direct-to-consumer streaming.
“With the media landscape continuing to evolve, Major League Baseball is committed to serving our fans by ensuring they can see their favorite clubs, removing blackouts where we can, and ultimately growing the reach of our games,” Noah Garden, MLB deputy commissioner for business and media, said in a statement.
The Twins took a public relations hit in Minnesota for cutting their 2024 player payroll coming off a division title and their first postseason series win in 22 years, in light of the reduced rights fee coming from Diamond. They will lose the rights fee altogether with this MLB-produced model, but team president Dave St. Peter said this announcement would not have an effect on player spending for the upcoming season.
“We’ve spent a tremendous amount of time with Major League Baseball trying to better understand this marketplace, trying to better understand what a model like this will ultimately provide to the team. We also have studied closely what’s happened in San Diego, in Arizona and in Colorado. We’ve gotten comfortable in those economics. They are where they are," St. Peter said.
"We do expect that there will be a reduction in local revenue coming to the Twins in 2025. I think that’s a fact. That said, over the long haul we have tremendous confidence in our content and believe, while maybe we’ll take a dip for ’25, that over time the viewership and those economics related to that viewership will increase.”
Cleveland games were available on approximately 1.45 million households on its regional sports network. That reach is expected to increase 235% to 4.86 million households. Minnesota's will go up 307% from 1.08 million homes to 4.4 million.
Schlesinger said the Brewers had 800,000 households that could receive games this past season, but he also expects to see significant growth with the new model.
“From a fan perspective, it’s great because you’re going to have total access and no blackouts," he said. “There’s a lot of staffing, a lot of infrastructure, a lot of decisions have to be made, a lot of people to be hired, a lot of sponsors to contact. This is the right time to do this. It’s a good jumping point, platform to make sure when the calendar turns to 2025, we’re already fully immersed in this and that we know when the first game starts, that we’re ready to go and the product’s going to be outstanding.”
MLB could be taking over more teams as Diamond Sports Group continues to go through bankruptcy proceedings. The nation's largest owner of regional sports networks could be down to doing only Atlanta Braves games in 2025.
The operator of the Bally Sports regional networks presented its reorganization plan in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston last week. As part of the reorganization, Diamond plans to void the contracts of the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays and to attempt to rework the deals of the five franchises that are partial owners of their regional sports networks — the Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals.
St. Peter said he expects more teams to sign onto the model in the future.
“Starting to build that direct-to-consumer foundation, which clearly is the future of the way our games will be distributed — it’s time to get on with that and we’re excited about that,” St. Peters said. “Our ownership understands the consequences of that, but I think over time there’s way more upside than short-term downside.”
A final hearing on Diamond's reorganization plan is scheduled for Nov. 14. Diamond also has the rights to 13 NBA and eight NHL teams.
Diamond Sports Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group bought the regional sports networks from The Walt Disney Co. for nearly $10 billion in 2019. Disney was required by the Department of Justice to sell the networks for its acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets to be approved.
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AP sports writers Dave Campbell in Minneapolis and Steve Megargee in Milwaukee contributed to this story.
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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb