Bye-bye Bally Sports, bye-bye blackouts, and bye-bye some TV revenue
By now you’ve probably seen the announcement and reports that the Minnesota Twins have agreed to a new TV broadcast deal with Major League Baseball. They join five other clubs — Arizona, Colorado, San Diego, Milwaukee, and Cleveland — in having MLB produce and broadcast their games.
The news comes just a day after the club announced it was continuing its radio broadcast deal with Audacy and WCCO, meaning there is clarity about where Twins games will be available to fans on both TV and radio for the first time in quite a while.
On the TV side, team president Dave St. Peter said the Twins’ plan includes a dedicated local television station available on cable and satellite, and a direct-to-consumer digital streaming option via MLB.tv.
Starting in 2025: TwinsTV!
Available via cable, satellite, and streaming in-market.
More info: https://t.co/R3oQK86J6F pic.twitter.com/QVnxUxLCFW
— Minnesota Twins (@Twins) October 8, 2024
MLB broadcast games for the Padres, Diamondbacks, and Rockies last season via similar means, negotiating cable and satellite distribution agreements and offering $19.99 monthly and $99.99 season-long streaming packages in those markets. It is anticipated the Twins’ offerings will be comparable.
Per MLB’s announcement, the new agreement will expand the Twins’s reach from approximately 1.08 million households to 4.40 million households. Crucially, this agreement also means that the streaming option will be available in the market (i.e., no blackouts, except for national broadcasts), which means fans can access the Twins for something like 150 games without having to subscribe to a cable or satellite package.
“It’s an exciting day for the organization, but more importantly, for our fans and for our partners,” St. Peter said. “It will eliminate all blackouts, as we have come to know and hate them. It will bring, in our view, an enhanced production of Twins baseball, of innovation and new features that I think will make an already excellent television production team led by Cory Provus and Justin Morneau and others and make them even better. It will propel us into the future with a direct-to-consumer streaming option that our fans have been desperately asking for.”
If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. This is essentially the same arrangement it seemed the Twins were on the verge of doing last winter, when Cory Provus declared, somewhat infamously now, that blackouts were ending.
The club instead pivoted back to Bally Sports on a reduced one-year agreement that did not have an in-market streaming option. That decision had all kinds of negative ripple effects, including a significant payroll reduction and getting caught in between a distributor disagreement between Bally and Comcast that prevented Twins games from being available to those customers for a large chunk of the 2024 season.
Whereas the previous regional sports network contract setup was highly lucrative — up to $54M a year — this new arrangement is expected to bring in significantly less revenue. That’s especially the case given the diminished state of fan morale and interest coming off a disappointing season full of management missteps that alienated the fans who were riding high after an exciting playoff run a year ago. It certainly seems probable the subscriptions for the streaming option would have been much higher if the club had done this last offseason than they will be now.
That said, St. Peter said it’s not expected that this new arrangement will have additional impact on the club’s player payroll in 2025:
“I don’t think today’s announcement has any impact on payroll.” — #MNTwins president Dave St. Peter
St. Peter noted that Joe Pohlad knew this broadcast setup was coming when he answered questions recently about the 2025 payroll.
— Aaron Gleeman (@AaronGleeman) October 8, 2024
John writes for Twinkie Town, Twins Daily, and Pitcher List with an emphasis on analysis. He is a lifelong Twins fan and former college pitcher. Follow him on Twitter @JohnFoley_21.