After Diamond Sports Group informed the San Diego Padres it was neglecting to pay the fee for the local broadcast rights, Major League Baseball has officially taken control of local broadcasts for the team. Games will continue to be made available on linear television providers, but will also be available to stream on MLB.TV. Fans in the team’s home market can subscribe to MLB.TV for $19.99 a month or pay $74.99 for the remainder of the season.
On Wednesday, San Diego Padres chief executive officer Erik Greupner joined Ben & Woods on 97.3 The Fan to inform consumers what the process has entailed over the last several months. He said Diamond Sports Group had a two-week grace period to submit their rights payment, but he received a call from company CEO David Preshlack saying that wasn’t going to happen.
“We’ve been working for months with Major League Baseball, [and] we’d already been sort of through a fire drill once or twice before,” Greupner said. “I think we’re as prepared as we can be. It’s never easy to make these sorts of changes in-season. We’re trying to do our very best to communicate with our fans, but the bottom line is this is a really good development for fans.”
The move could be indicative of things to come, as the league is looking to end local blackouts and expedite its own direct-to-consumer streaming option by reacquiring broadcast rights as the deals expire.
“I was in a full-blown panic last night [and was] almost on the phone with Cox because I’m a Cox subscriber,” show co-host Steve Woods said. “It’s convenient – my Cox is there; it’s ready; it’s waiting. I turn on Cox. I’m good to go and there’s my Padres on Bally – I’m good. As we know, things have changed, and I don’t like to change. I don’t like change at all. I’ll do it if I have to, but I really am the guy that needs his hand held.”
Major League Baseball hired Billy Chambers to become its first executive vice president of local media. He brings over 20 years of experience to the role, largely in senior finance roles with FOX Sports and Sinclair Broadcast Group, and has been tasked with overseeing media rights distribution and local management.
The Padres’ new broadcast arrangement augments the reach of games by 189% and gives fans multiple options to keep up with the team. Greupner expressed how fans have been asking for the ability to stream games in the market without blackouts. Moreover, some locations where fans are bound by blackout restrictions because of exclusive local rights do not even have regional sports networks distributed to them, leaving them entirely in the dark.
“This move, we anticipate, is going to be the last move that we have to make for quite some time as far as the eye can see,” Greupner revealed. “Under the direction and leadership of the Commissioner [and] what MLB is doing – and we happen to be the first team that’s making the move – but they are stepping in and replacing what has become a broken RSN model.”
Diamond Sports Group, a subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group, recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is in active litigation with the league after refusing to pay the full amount of rights fees to other teams. The entity stated it had sufficient funding in liquidity and would agree to do so in exchange for valuable direct-to-consumer streaming rights, something the league quickly shot down.
“It’ll take you a day or two to get used to turning the Padres to a different channel on your cable,” show co-host Ben Higgins said. “If you were getting the Padres before, you will be getting the Padres starting today as well – just not on Bally Sports San Diego anymore.”
