Sixty years ago, baseball commissioner Ford Frick received a telegram from a Wisconsin congressman. Rep. Henry Reuss was worried that the Milwaukee Braves would defect to Atlanta for the promise of a rich television contract, and he proposed a solution: if all the Major League teams shared their television money, then the Braves could stay.
According to the Associated Press, Frick responded that summer of 1964 that “…a plan to pool all television revenues would not be feasible or acceptable at this time,” but would be “worthy of consideration in the future.”
Now, in 2024, that conversation has arrived. Commissioner Rob Manfred and some of the sport's owners are talking more seriously than ever about nationalizing baseball's television rights. Not because of the relocation, but because of the cutting of cables, the failure of some traditional regional sports networks and the simultaneous battle for streaming supremacy waged by Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services that has left sports leagues and broadcast holders rights in a chaotic reform.
Some baseball owners and executives, primarily in smaller markets, believe the best way to increase long-term media revenue is to centralize trading and, from there, potentially sell all 30 regular-season broadcasts. equipment as a single transmission package. . Others in the game, particularly those whose teams make the most money, are vehemently opposed to giving up their power over their rights.
The obstacles to such change are enormous, but it is notable that it is even being contemplated. The end of local media rights to baseball would be one of the most radical alterations imaginable in the tumultuous world of sports television. Unsurprisingly, the possibility is also controversial.
“As the local media situation evolves, we will continue to evaluate the best model moving forward,” Manfred said in a statement to The Athletic. “Our course of action will be determined by the clubs, who are the final decision-makers under our constitution.”
While MLB has long entered into several national media deals (including for the postseason, with networks like FOX and TBS, and for Sunday night games during the regular season, with ESPN), individual teams have always controlled most of their regular season inventory, as well as the choice of television stations with which they partner within their national markets. (The front office already controls each team's “out-of-market” rights, which is why fans in New York can sign up for MLB.tv and watch any game besides the Mets or Yankees.)
Eliminating local rights could eliminate many of the blackout restrictions that frustrate fans. But not all clubs believe that Manfred's office can use the rights better than individually.
However, the most divisive issue is dollars. Regardless of how a commissioner deploys the entitlements, the question would be: How are the revenues distributed, equally or otherwise? The New York Yankees received an estimated $143 million in rights payments in 2022, much higher than a team like the Colorado Rockies, which received $57 million that same year. according to Forbes. This is, then, a revival of baseball's classic drama: the big market versus the big market. little.
“Everything is on the table for the future, because it's so unknown,” Sam Kennedy, president of the big-market Boston Red Sox, said during spring training. “Look, there are always issues that arise where large market teams have a different view than small market teams. In the end, we must also focus on the greater good of the industry.”
A new era is just beginning in sports broadcasting and changes are coming quickly. On Wednesday, Netflix and the NFL announced that the streamer would recently air Christmas Day games. Netflix pays around $75 million per game.
Separately, on Wednesday, the other three major U.S. men's sports leagues, the MLB, NBA and NHL, appeared in court arguing that one of their largest broadcast partners, Diamond Sports Group, was opening up stumbled toward bankruptcy and a transportation dispute with a prominent cable company, Comcast. This month, a dozen MLB teams broadcast on Diamond's Bally channels cannot be seen by Comcast's approximately 13.6 million television customers.
The bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group has been an ongoing problem for MLB. (David Berding/Getty Images)
Then on Thursday, FOX, Warner Bros. Discovery and Hulu announced the name of their next sports package: “venu.”
The prospect of a big payday from a streaming company is naturally attractive in baseball circles. Regional sports networks have traditionally committed a lot of money up front to teams. Streamers could act differently, preferring a risk-reward model: the more people flock to the content, the more money will be paid. But in the long term, as streamers jockey for position, Manfred could bet that Amazon and its ilk will collectively pay more than traditional RSNs do today for fragmented content.
The crux of the discussion, then, is really whether baseball could thrive as a “national” sport. Ironically, the national pastime is often considered a local game.
“Like almost everything in American life, it's about money,” former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent said in a telephone interview. “The money is hugely skewed locally. You know, trying to get interested, if you live in New York, in a game where Seattle flies to San Diego or something, it just doesn't work.”
MLB just sold a bundle of Sunday morning games to Roku, which The Athletic reported Thursday was for $10 million per year. Previously, Peacock had paid $30 million per season for the same package. Roku, unlike Peacock, does not require a paid subscription, but MLB's reduced fee was discouraging to some officials.
“It just shows that there is no national package,” said one sports executive who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “People want to pay only for premium equipment.”
One sport has long thrived on a national rights model: the National Football League. By the time Frick made his comments in 1964, the NFL was already negotiating deals as a single entity.
But then sports were in different places, like they are now. The NFL's weekly schedule has always offered a much smaller number of games compared to baseball's nightly cadence.
“The local television contract in football simply never had as much value in the early days, because of the small inventory,” said James Walker, professor emeritus of communications at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, author of books on the history of broadcasting. of baseball. “What that meant is that the (football) teams, when they established their television policy, were much closer in parity. “The notion of a big-market team versus a small-market team just didn’t have the same meaning in the NFL as it always did in Major League Baseball.”
Football's decision to nationalize rights is an achievement often attributed to a titan among sports commissioners, Pete Rozelle, who took over in 1960. Walker said a predecessor of Rozelle, Bert Bell, actually also deserves attention for that purpose.
Whether Manfred wants to be remembered as baseball's Rozelle or the Bell is one of the most interesting questions as Manfred moves toward his planned retirement in 2029.
Manfred's mission is probably simple: make as much money as surely as possible, either by diving headfirst into the local media business or by outsourcing it, as has long been the norm. But any substantial change will require him to corral all 30 of his bosses, and a change in the rights structure could be a bridge too far.
“In baseball, it's very difficult for a commissioner to get the owners to work for the collective good,” Walker said. “The idea that at this stage the Yankees would suddenly agree to share their domestic rights, in some kind of shared setup, it's not impossible that that could happen.
“But it would basically mean that you would have to find a way for the Yankees to receive what they consider their fair compensation. And you would be going against the grain. “If we go back to the radio era, we are really talking about 90 years of history.”
Existing contracts between regional sports teams and networks are a huge situation. Some teams have agreements with RSN that extend into the 2030s. These agreements have often promised exclusivity to the RSN, so MLB couldn't simply turn around and group games as it saw fit with a simulcast.
So even if teams agreed to nationalize local rights tomorrow and assigned their current agreements to the league office, MLB would have to wait until some expire to use the rights in new ways, or would have to negotiate an early termination. to those agreements. The Dodgers' television contract, for example, ends in 2038.
The league may also have to negotiate changes with the players union, because revenue sharing between teams is collectively negotiated. That means the next collective bargaining agreement negotiations, in 2026, could bring these issues to a head. The MLBPA declined to comment.
There are alternative theories about the direction baseball or any sport should take. Perhaps there is greater revenue to be had by developing packages grouped by market, rather than by sport: a New York package across multiple leagues, etc.
A three-quarters vote typically allows owners to change the sport's constitution. But less than 100 percent support for a change in the rights setup could leave MLB in dangerous territory. If any owner felt the league was improperly assuming something of value, lawsuits could arise.
In a nuanced distinction: MLB could launch some kind of smaller national broadcast package, one with perhaps half the teams, without changing its actual rights system. Some teams today don't have exclusive deals with RSN, freeing them up for the league to bundle them into a package right away. Manfred has expressed interest in doing this as early as 2025, but he doesn't have enough teams that he can assemble. in this point for a viable product. However, that could change later this year if Diamond Sports Group fails to emerge from bankruptcy.
Asked in February whether the idea of moving away from local rights would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, Kennedy said: “The world is changing rapidly.”
“Consumers should be able to access our products, our games, whenever they want, where they want, and quickly,” Kennedy said. “We can't make it difficult for them.”
(Top photo of Manfred: Mike Carlson/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
