Buh bye Bally & ESPN
As mobile phones and the internet-at-large ever further displace traditional media like cable TV, sporting leagues and the conglomerates that bring them to us continue evolving. Since we last saw our baseball-playing heroes (read in 1966 Batman announcer voice), the sports media landscape has undergone a few more twists—both in-market and league-wide.
Twins.tv
The Minnesota Twins are no longer affiliated with The Entity Formerly Known as Bally Sports North (now FanDuel Sports Network). Depending on what stake you have in Twins baseball, this is either really good or really bad news. Owners hate cable TV’s fracturing, as it has decimated the value of television contracts. Or perhaps it has given owners another reason (excuse?) to cry poor. That depends where you fall on the “Elon Musk to Bernie Sanders” scale of billionaire sympathy.
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
But we here at Twinkie Town are not owners (yet), so rejoice! After all the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments—from Victory Sports One to near-total blackouts in the Twin Cities—there is now a direct-to-consumer option to watch Twins baseball. Twins.tv will cost you $100 per season ($50 if you have any season ticket plan) but it is free from the whims of the cable TV oligarchy. Well…sort of. Apparently, there will be a channel on Twin Cities cable providers that activates for Twins games and nothing else. I say “apparently” because details/price-haggling is still being worked out—and when does that ever go poorly?
Overall, I think this is a good move for MLB & the Twins. Though it generates less revenue in the short term, it is a progressive-thinking solution to get out from under the Jenga tower that is cable television before the final removed block sends it crashing down. Plus, all the folks who constantly whined—if justified in the moment—about the Twins not being available on TV? Now we’ll see if the money is put where those mouths were.
ESPN & MLB Uncouple
I am squarely of the generation that grew up on Baseball Tonight. Imagine—a nightly show of 100% baseball highlights/analysis. On Sunday nights, the dulcet duo of Jon Miller & Joe Morgan made baseball-under-the-lights at least a kissing cousin to the NFL’s prime-time product 24 hours later. ESPN was also the main highway for Home Run Derby coverage.
That is now all in the rearview mirror. Though no one is sure who drew up the divorce papers first, it is—like most things—probably a mix of both. While MLB is less appointment viewing on a national scale than it was 20-25 years ago, it certainly isn’t the chopped liver the pride of Bristol, CT treated it as in recent years.
Again, I call this progress for MLB—perhaps an opportunity to partner with another network or streamer (Amazon, Apple, Peacock, etc.) to package baseball as an exciting product rather than an afterthought to fantasy football, basketball highlights & talking heads.