Sports Media

RTaylor 2021-08-13 18:48:37 UTC #221

So glad this board is back. I don't post often, but I love the minor league talk and nicely formatted boxscores. "You don't know what you've got till it's gone."

zambonir 2021-08-28 19:02:04 UTC #222

This was the week that The Athletic not replacing Montemurro became especially noticeable: presumably Gelb had a planned vacation this week (after filing his notes column for the 24th), they had to get a national writer to cover the front office change and haven't had any bylined stories about the injuries or latest COVID outbreak (or just this past week's games in general).

He was probably thinking, "better squeeze in some time off before these important September games!"

andyb 2021-08-28 19:10:03 UTC #223

I guess I did not notice. Covering 100+ local beats is tough for a publication struggling to break even. I wonder if a more national focus (with fewer local writers) is their future. Or worse, low paid stringers on the beats.

zambonir 2021-08-28 19:41:05 UTC #224

I mean, I've noticed all year, they would have had 5-6, even 7 stories a week and now it's 3. But since they also don't have in-person access to the team, and aren't (I don't think) going on the road, it wasn't necessarily a bad decision, and maybe not even a permanent one. Their college football coverage remains extremely robust (particularly nationally) and they still have two guys on the Sixers and Eagles.

I assume the Inquirer won't be replacing Brookover either. Instead of two beat writers and a baseball-only columnist, Breen and Lauber will just do it all with the general columnists chiming in as usual.

And I believe the NFL's protocol this fall only allows locker room access to the team/league's own website reporters.

andyb 2021-08-31 19:35:55 UTC #225

Long piece (with no obvious solutions) on the future of RSNs and streaming:

This one too. Looks like they are doing a larger series on the topic broadly:

bkox 2021-10-05 17:14:06 UTC #226

According to Major League Baseball, MLB had its best year in streaming.

MLB-dot-TV tallied:

- 10.5 billion minutes watched. Beat previous record by +39%; 7.38 billion minutes in 2019,
- 141.98 million games watched. Beats previous record by +37%; 101.4 million games in 2019.
— Brandon Costa ( @SVG_Brandon ) October 4, 2021

This season saw MLB-dot-TV register the Top 5 most-streamed games in the service's history, as well as log its 10 most-watched days ever.

— Brandon Costa ( @SVG_Brandon ) October 4, 2021

For what its worth, the league also says that the average age of those using MLB-dot-TV is going down.

"With an average age of 44 on https://t.co/7XZ7kYWPdi , the baseball audience has gotten younger on the service by four years since 2018 when the average age was 48."
— Brandon Costa ( @SVG_Brandon ) October 4, 2021

On linear, Major League Baseball reported MLB Network enjoyed a strong year, as well.

Live games: +31%
MLB Central: +18%
High Heat: +18%
Intentional Talk: +18%
MLB Now: +14%
The Rundown: +13%
MLB Tonight +6%

*data entering final weekend of regular season. Compared to '20. https://t.co/2ie9kVZTis
— Brandon Costa ( @SVG_Brandon ) October 5, 2021

andyb 2021-10-05 17:20:05 UTC #227

A 39% improvement in minutes watched over 2 years is nice, though I would not call that explosive growth in the cord-cutting error. I bet lots of it is people like me who took a low price special in the middle of the year and also t-mobile subscribers who get it free (and the app is better than it was 2 years ago).

There is probably a corresponding loss in ratings for regional channels which is the other side of cord-cutting. MLB really needs to figure out a better solution for that piece, because the big story I suspect is fewer viewers even if TV revenue is up.

julio 2021-10-05 19:15:33 UTC #228

This would be a good outcome. Regional channel contracts benefit individual teams; MLB streaming, and MLB Network, benefit all clubs financially. The more revenue that MLB obtains centrally - and ideally at the expense of unequal revenue that benefits certain clubs disproportionately - the better.

andyb 2021-10-05 19:22:08 UTC #229

The issue though is that it is not much more income today, and all the RSN money will start to decrease as cord-cutting increases. They have not really figured out a way to replace the RSN revenue long term, and they are losing some of the sport's popularity by making it harder to watch. That will lead to less attendance.

Fewer people watching baseball is a problem. Remember boxing? I think they are betting on gambling money to replace it. That does not seem to be something they can control long term (as in people will bet on their phones on an app not cotrolled by the team/league because they will get better odds there).

Also, they reversed the one good thing Bud Selig did when he said all streaming money would be split equally. That is no longer the case.

"But in 2019, MLB returned the digital rights to the clubs, because the technology had reached a point where there was no meaningful difference between the two forms of rights."

zambonir 2021-10-05 19:29:05 UTC #230

Yeah, plus they actually sold most of their interest in MLB.TV (and its even bigger parent company) to Disney. I seriously doubt the inevitable future of full local market streaming, whatever that looks like, will involve revenue sharing. The Yankees already have their own deal with Amazon. The Sinclair/Bally and NBC markets will be part of those company's attempts to use new platforms (assuming NBC doesn't just sell to Sinclair), as we already saw with those Peacock games.

Heck, the baseball fans MLB needs to be watching by the time the Phillies' current rights deal ends haven't even been born yet. And the Phillies aren't sharing any of that Comcast money with Milwaukee.

andyb 2021-10-05 19:41:02 UTC #231

I would argue that teams should still share SOME of their local streaming money. Let them keep 50% and share 50%. That will give them incentive to sell more streaming subscriptions and also lessen some of the local TV revenue disparities. I think what they share of local TV is somewhere in the 30s, though ticket sales are closer to 50-50.

bkox 2021-10-05 23:58:48 UTC #232

Overall average viewership for the Yankees on the YES Network grew 7% from 2019, the last full MLB season, while live streaming consumption of Yankees games on the YES App grew 156%.
— Maury Brown ( @BizballMaury ) October 5, 2021

andyb 2021-10-06 03:59:21 UTC #233

Overall baseball RSN viewership was down about 12% from 2019. Up slightly compared to 2020.

zambonir 2021-10-06 06:34:01 UTC #234

But how many of that 12% was just people getting rid of cable?

andyb 2021-10-06 11:43:18 UTC #235

Probably at least half of that coupled with the RSNs not being on streaming services. It is all tied together in a way though since the sports channels and RSNs are the ones pushing up prices. When the sport's reaction is to maintain as high as price as they can while they have near monopoly access to cable systems, then they run the risk of systems dropping it.

Baseball is the most local of sports. A good NBA team will be on national TV 15-20 times in a season. The RSN money in baseball is a much bigger share of revenue than other sports except for hockey. But baseball generates much more money from RSNs than hockey where the live gate has a larger share.

People not watching baseball is a problem not completely solved by gambling revenue. At some point the sport becomes less popular and more of a niche sport when it gets too expensive for many viewers. Not sure I would pay $25 a month each for two different RSNs if I had the choice. Fewer viewers on TV eventually becomes fewer viewers in the stands. That's a problem.

bkox 2021-10-06 15:17:47 UTC #236

zambonir 2021-10-06 16:56:11 UTC #237

I think even when the RSNs are on streaming services it counts as streaming not TV viewers. This has also been the case for me with blackout rules (though some of that has been fixed).

schillingfan 2021-10-06 17:09:33 UTC #238

Not sure why, but I get MSNBC sports Philly on Hulu.

andyb 2021-10-06 17:23:58 UTC #239

The NBC sports channels are among the few that have broad streaming agreements. I get NBC Sports Washington (Wizards, Caps) with Youtube TV but not MASN (Nats, Orioles). The AT&T streaming service is the only one that has most sports channels these days (Direct TV Stream). It starts at $85-$90 a month though instead of the $55-$65 I pay for YTTV.

While YTTV just renewed their contract with NBC, I fear that all these streaming services will lose their regional sports channels in the next few years, or alternatively be just as expensive as cable.

zambonir 2021-10-06 17:48:51 UTC #240

MSNBC Sports

NBC just shut down their channel in Portland because the Blazers left them for Root. But Root is owned by ATT and was already on DirectTV stream. I still only pay $65 for that, including HBO, as an original customer. I was considering leaving before the Root thing happened (that's also where NHL, MLB and MLS is, and they finally stopped blacking out the MLS games).

I think you're right, like, if Sinclair/Bally buys the NBC channels, they will probably try to get off the cord-cutter services entirely and just make everyone buy their stand-alone sports product. In theory that should appeal to someone like julio, who has never wanted to pay $100+ a month for cable but might pay $20 straight-up for the Phillies. But that's still a high price point, especially for those of us who keep cable or use a cord-cutter service (as well as other things like Netflix or the Disney bundle).