Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred feels good about the position the league is in handling local media rights for teams impacted by the bankruptcy of Bally Sports owner Diamond Sports Group.
There was a lot of uncertainty coming into the season in the spring regarding the future of local broadcasts for teams that were affiliated with Bally Sports regional networks. But Manfred is confident that the league can make local rights a profitable venture.
“We are confident that we can produce revenue streams in those local markets that are not drastically different from what the teams have been used to enjoying,” Manfred said in an interview on The Marchand & Ourand Sports Media Podcast. “There may be a little downtick and then a build back up. We really do believe in the fundamental value of the content, and we think over time in this new model, we will be able to more than replicate the revenue streams that clubs have enjoyed.”
The league was prepared to take over broadcasting games locally for teams not just with Bally, but with regional sports networks Warner Bros. Discovery divested earlier this year.
The Pittsburgh Pirates are still figuring out the future of their local broadcasts, as are the Colorado Rockies. The Houston Astros partnered with the Houston Rockets to launch Space City Home Network.
The Seattle Mariners will continue to have games air on ROOT Sports, which took on a similar look and feel to broadcasts as games on AT&T SportsNet. That’s because WBD has a minority stake in that RSN. The divestiture of the networks in Pittsburgh, Denver, and Houston hasn’t affected ROOT operations.
“None of it impacts ROOT Sports Northwest or its teams,” AT&T SportsNet president Patrick Crumb told the Seattle Times back in February.
As for Diamond Sports and Bally Sports and their financial woes, Rob Manfred told Andrew Marchand and John Ourand that they brought it on themselves.
“The difficulties encountered by Sinclair have less to do with the value of our content than with business decisions that they consciously made,” he said. “Maybe it’s tough bargaining, but I don’t really think it’s good business to devalue your product in order to cover up some bad decisions that another entity made.”
