https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/42527774/mlb-now-eyeing-long-term-media-rights-plan-all-30-teams
MLB hopes to have roughly half its teams' broadcast rights to negotiate with companies then. The league's ultimate goal is to hold linear and digital rights for all 30 clubs to have available for negotiations with networks. MLB believes nationalizing the broadcast rights would maximize revenue and eliminate local blackouts, which would expand reach. But that would require compelling clubs with stable regional sports networks, a few of which at least partially own the networks, to eventually relinquish their control and join MLB's cluster.
I also didn't realize the Mets don't own any part of SNY. I thought they had at least partial ownership at one point. Was that split away when the Wilpons sold?
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Wilpons used to own the Mets and SNY. They only sold the team to Cohen and kept SNY
Originally it was anticipated that Cohen would also acquire SNY, but they couldn’t settle on a number, Wilson’s asking for the moon, network is a cash cow in part because the TV rights deal with the Mets was like a third of the real value. Wilson’s did that to lower the amount of revenue sharing they would have to pay, so essentially when they owned both the Mets and SNY the chose to make less profit on the Mets and more from SNY because the SNY profits don’t count toward revenue sharing.
That said, every year they get closer to the end if the agreement network friendly agreement between the Mets and SNY is a year Cohen gains leverage, because without those TV rights, especially on current terms, the network is worth much less.
Also, pretty sure the Wilson’s are leveraged against their stake in SNY.
Great idea, and I’ll believe it when I see it.
Manfred seize the means of (baseball broadcast) production
Wilpons say no
Manfred no doubt thinks he has a business plan that will result in even the teams with stable rsn deals to yield greater profits.
My bet is that he intends to the full broadcast rights to hold ISPs hostage and make them pay MLB a per customer fee to allow their internet customers to access mlb tv over their internet service.
Similar to the scheme that developed with the cable companies and the rsns, but on a national level. They’re going to tell spectrum that if spectrum wants it’s customers to be able to watch mlb.tv over spectrum’s service, then spectrum will need to pay a fee to mlb for every spectrum internet customer across the country
As a fan who lives in both philly and nationals territory and get blacked out on mlb.tv a ton I support this.
Privatize the losses, socialize the profits, nationalize the baseball broadcast rights
Screw him
No blackout areas would be nice.
Yes. Not getting SNY was a huge holdup in the negotiations between Cohen and the Wilpons. I think Cohen gets control sometime in the next couple years, though.
Fingers crossed.