Because of the timing of these decisions, and how much more they rely on local media rights agreements rather than national ones, MLB teams and fans are sweating.

However, not all RSNs are created equal. Some teams and their fans should be very nervous. Others shouldn’t even bat an eye. So, which teams fall into the former category, which fall into the latter, and which are somewhere in between? Let’s break it down.

Not at all nervous: Blue Jays, Cubs, Dodgers, Red Sox, Mariners, Mets, Yankees

This one is easy. These seven teams own, or their ownership groups own, the RSNs their games air on. The Cubs and Sinclair split the ownership of Marquee Sports Network. The Blue Jays are owned by Rogers Communications, which also owns Sportsnet. Mets owner Steve Cohen doesn’t own SNY, but former owner Fred Wilpon and his Sterling Enterprises joint venture does. Guggenheim, the ownership group of the Dodgers, owns half of SportsNet LA. Fenway Sports Group, the Red Sox ownership group, owns 80% of NESN. The Yankees’ ownership group owns the largest share of YES Network. The Mariners own 60% of Root Sports Northwest, with the other 40% held by Warner Bros. Discovery (for now, at least).

In short, these teams are fine. Their RSNs aren’t going under unless the teams want them to go under (for whatever reason). NESN, Sportsnet, and YES also have launched direct to consumer (DTC) services through their RSNs, potentially protecting them from future subscriber churn or carriage disputes.

Only a tiny bit nervous: Athletics, Giants, Phillies, White Sox

Grouping the A’s in with these three teams is weird, but that’s the power of being on an NBC RSN. The company has shown no signs of pulling out of the RSN business, and while the RSNs aren’t available on DTC service Peacock quite yet, the service has been live for years and wouldn’t need time to get off the ground.

The Giants, Phillies, and White Sox all also have minority stakes in their RSNs.

It all depends on the courts: Nationals, Orioles

As BSL readers are quite aware, MASN, the RSN airing the Nationals, Orioles, and little else of value, is a complete mess. The Orioles are the majority owner of the network, with the Nationals as the minority owner, and the two teams have been embroiled in a legal dispute that has lasted years regarding rights fees owed to the Nationals. An unfavorable ruling in the case could cause the network to completely collapse, leaving both teams up a creek without a paddle. If there’s a favorable ruling, maybe things will get better in the future.

Fans of these two teams will have to do what they’ve done for years – just keep on waiting.

Nervous, but calm: Brewers, Marlins, Rays, Royals, Tigers

These are the first five Bally Sports teams on our list, and what separates them from their brethren is something that pisses MLB off – these five teams renewed their rights deals with the Diamond Sports Group in recent years, and also sold their streaming rights to the company. This means that Diamond can make their games available on the Bally Sports+ DTC package, a key negotiating point going forward for Bally.

Because those streaming rights were included, Diamond has another way to monetize these teams’ games. With cord cutting and carriage disputes giving Diamond body blow after body blow, availability on the DTC service is a must-have going forward.

Nervous due to silence, but still moving forward: Angels, Braves, Cardinals, Twins

These four teams are in no man’s land in Diamond’s bankruptcy for the sole reason that they’ve never been mentioned as either safe or on the chopping block. All four teams kept their streaming rights, meaning their games can’t be monetized through Bally Sports+, but their contracts aren’t so onerous and unprofitable that they could be cut loose. It’s admittedly not the best position to be in, but at least they’re not getting talked about as being dumped any day now.

The Twins stand out in this group because their media rights deal expires after this season. Will the organization jump up a level by selling their streaming rights to Diamond in a new deal? Or will they attempt to launch their own RSN as they did 20 years ago? Given that Victory Sports One shut down just a month into its first and only Twins season, maybe the franchise won’t want to repeat that mistake and will stick with their Bally Sports affiliate.

Pretty damn nervous: Diamondbacks, Guardians, Padres, Rangers, Reds

Four teams have consistently been mentioned as being on the chopping block for Diamond Sports: the Diamondbacks, Guardians, Padres, and Reds. The Rangers have not, though the franchise has done some saber rattling regarding leaving Bally (despite making nine figures a year), so I figured I’d throw them into this category too.

Of these five, the Padres are probably the safest, given that Diamond Sports made a payment to the team this week after missing a deadline and entering a grace period. If that payment wasn’t made, the Padres likely would have been cut loose sooner rather than later.

The Diamondbacks weren’t so lucky in either regard. Diamond missed a payment to them, and also didn’t make that payment before the end of the grace period. However, that original missed payment came before Diamond’s bankruptcy, meaning reclaiming the team’s rights would have been a more complicated proposition for MLB.

Attention now turns to the Guardians and Reds, who have payments due in the near future. If those payments are missed, both teams are thrown into a questionable situation for the rest of this season and beyond.

As for the Rangers, they’d normally be in the category before this along with the Angels, Braves, Cardinals, and Twins. If they are able to get out of their long-term deal with Diamond, it’s still quite unclear as to where they’ll end up.

Sweating, but they’ve been here before: Astros

Ten years ago, the Astros and Rockets launched an RSN called CSN Houston in partnership with Comcast. It was a complete disaster, leading to the RSN’s collapse, a bankruptcy filing, and its purchase by AT&T and DirecTV. Numerous carriage deals were struck, the RSN was rebranded as Root Sports Southwest (and later AT&T SportsNet Southwest), and everything was fine.

Until last month, of course, when Warner Bros. Discovery decided to get out of local sports. That put the Astros and Rockets (along with all of the other AT&T SportsNet teams) on course for disaster. However, the two teams are negotiating to take over the RSN, bringing back memories of the CSN Houston days. But because of the long-term deals already in place, the Houston teams will be in a better position now assuming the deal to acquire the RSN is closed.

Drenched: Pirates, Rockies

The lack of chatter surrounding these two teams following Warner Bros. Discovery’s exit announcement seems ominous. The Rockies have another RSN in town in the Kroenke-owned Altitude, which has its own issues, possibly allowing for a soft landing. Altitude’s primary live rights are the Avalanche and Nuggets, leaving a wide-open summer for the Rockies. Adding live Rockies games could also ail Altitude’s carriage woes in both the near and long-term future.

As for the Pirates, there are far fewer positives. AT&T SportsNet’s primary teams are the Penguins and Pirates, and since the Pens are majority-owned by the Fenway Sports Group, NESN could give them a somewhat logical landing point. The Pirates have no such option. The team’s frugality makes a takeover of the RSN seem unlikely. The closest other RSNs are over the border in Ohio, and I already discussed how Diamond Sports could cut bait on both the Guardians and Reds.

Pittsburgh seems like an opportunity for Scripps to jump in and strike a local deal, given their ownership of the city’s ION affiliate. Cincinnati and Cleveland could follow the same path if the Reds and Guardians are dropped by Bally, but the situations in those two cities seems far less pressing than the one in Pittsburgh.

The post Which MLB Teams Should Feel Best and Worst About Their RSN Situations  appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

The media rights for four other conferences will now move into the spotlight: the Big 12, Pac-12, Mountain West, and football-free Big East.

The Big 12 and Pac-12 are the more significant deals, as each conference’s rights are currently split between ESPN and Fox. Will the two companies continue to work together after their split on the Big Ten? ESPN has saved money by not retaining the Big Ten’s rights and could conceivably funnel some of that money to the Big 12 and Pac-12, potentially for a larger package of games to gain an advantage over Fox. The value of both conference’s rights has been damaged due to the defections of Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC and UCLA and USC to the Big Ten

When it comes to the Big 12, I’d fully expect the conference to stick with one or both of its current partners. There haven’t been many rumblings about other potential bidders, and CBS and NBC hooking up with the Big Ten probably takes both out of potential Big 12 bidding. Each was looking to fill one window on its daily schedule, which both did with their Big Ten rights deals. Adding the Big 12 wouldn’t fit with that strategy.

As for the Pac-12, even with the loss of the two LA schools, there has been interest in the conference from tech companies. Fox’s interest seemed to be dissipating even before the announcement of the Big Ten’s deal, opening the door for ESPN to potentially split the rights with a company like Amazon or Apple and absorbing much of the Pac-12 Networks’ Olympic sports content into ESPN+.

The Mountain West is another interesting one, with its rights split between CBS and Fox. This package is attractive because it’s relatively cheap (currently, $45 million per year on a six-year deal), and provides live content from the Mountain and Pacific time zones, much like the Pac-12. The Mountain West is also an anchor of CBS Sports Network’s live game content, and if CBS wants to keep the network around going forward, retaining the Mountain West’s rights would be key to that. If Fox loses out on, or declines to keep, their chunk of Pac-12 rights, the Mountain West would be a great way to keep later time slots filled.

The Big East doesn’t get talked about often in these conversations since the conference doesn’t sponsor football, but it has plenty of value. Fox is nearing the end of a 12-year, $500 million rights deal with the conference should be popular for several reasons: the low price point, the large markets in the northeast and midwest who have members in the conference, and the on-court success of its schools. Could ESPN look into prying the Big East away from Fox to fill holes in its basketball schedule caused by the Big Ten’s departure?

And then there’s Notre Dame. I feel like the Fighting Irish are in a great position now that NBC has brought in the Big Ten because the whole purpose of that move was to create doubleheaders with Notre Dame games. If NBC wants to pay up, I’m sure Notre Dame would be glad to stay. If not, I’m sure the school would look into joining a conference (likely either the Big Ten or ACC) and getting a similar windfall. For NBC, losing access to those Notre Dame games would be brutal, given how much of their college football strategy over the years has been built around the Irish. If Notre Dame joins the ACC, their NBC appearances would be limited to non-conference games against Big Ten opponents that weren’t plucked up by another network. If they joined the Big Ten, they’d still probably show up on NBC, but not as part of a doubleheader, and not every time they’re at home. It would truly defeat the purpose of NBC partnering with the Big Ten, and that’s why I think the two parties will continue their relationship.

One area that could give some companies an edge in this bidding is streaming. While they’re not the main element of any deal, the Olympic sports included in media rights deals have to live somewhere, and that place is almost always a streaming platform. Fox’s lack of a dedicated subscription-based streaming platform means that the company will likely have to partner with another company in rights deals, as it did in the Big Ten deal, which included many of those Olympic sports going to Peacock.

But with NBC likely done with bidding for rights aside from Notre Dame and CBS seemingly not keen on going in on another major conference, that leaves ESPN and ESPN+ in a pretty good position to at least get some more content going forward. Sure, Amazon and Apple have plenty of experience in the streaming world, but would either company be all that interested in adding hundreds of Big 12 or Pac-12 Olympic sports to their services? It’s an interesting question, and if not, perhaps ESPN could use it to get a more favorable chunk of the pie.

The post After the Big Ten’s media rights deals, what’s next? appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

Scully joined the Dodgers broadcast booth at the age of 22, became the team’s primary play by play voice at 26, and held that role until his 2016 retirement at the age of 88. 67 years with one organization is absolutely wild. Joe Davis, Scully’s successor as the voice of the Dodgers, needs another 59 years to equal that feat. He’d be 94 in that 67^th season, by the way.

But Scully wasn’t just a Dodgers broadcaster. Nationally, he called the NFL for CBS, and the final game he called featured Dwight Clark’s iconic catch against the Cowboys in the 1982 NFC Championship. At CBS, he also called golf and tennis, along with baseball on CBS Radio.

Following his departure from CBS, Scully’s national work moved to NBC. At NBC, he called three of the most iconic plays in baseball history – Ozzie Smith’s walk off homer in Game 5 of the 1985 NLCS, Bill Buckner’s error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, and Kirk Gibson’s walk off homer in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.

He left NBC after the 1989 season, and his last national baseball gig came with CBS Radio, with Scully on the call of the World Series from 1990-1997. In that gig, he called Kirby Puckett’s Game 6 walk off homer in 1991, Gene Larkin’s series winning single a night later, Joe Carter’s series winning homer in 1993, and Edgar Renteria’s series winning single in 1997. Again, you’ve got all these iconic moments, and who’s on the call? Vin Scully.

Scully was behind the mic for 21 no-hitters, including ones thrown by Clayton Kershaw, Hideo Nomo, Fernando Valenzuela. He called all four of Sandy Koufax’s no-hitters, including his 1965 perfect game. That was one of three perfect games Scully called, along with Don Larsen’s in 1995 and Dennis Martinez’s in 1990.

But it wasn’t just the moments Scully called that made him so special. It was the way he called those moments, and all of the other games throughout his career. When big moments happened, Scully let the crowd’s noise do all the talking. He let the moment breathe and let the fans’ elation or despair tell the story. Instead of constantly talking to fill air, as many broadcasters do today, he knew when to back off. His style was refreshing, especially in an era of constant on-screen stimulation.

Scully also didn’t rely on stats, and while I appreciate a good stat as much as the next guy, some announcers can lean on them far too much. That wasn’t Scully. Instead, he’d tell stories about the players and the game, vividly filling in the lines created by the game on the field. The change of pace was relaxing and different, especially if you were an east coast viewer tuning in late at night.

Speaking of the west coast, more fans were exposed to Scully’s work with the Dodgers during the later years of his career thanks to MLB.TV. No matter the market, fans could watch a Dodgers game. listen to Scully, and be transported to a different time. I keep coming back to this word, but it was just so *refreshing* to experience a Vin Scully game after indulging in a modern broadcast.

It’s hard to imagine a broadcaster in 2022 becoming as universally beloved as Scully. His style is tough to emulate in today’s environment, and I can’t see an announcer ever matching his lengthy resume. Even someone like Joe Buck, a national voice for MLB and the NFL for decades, falls short. And if an accomplished, experienced announcer like Buck can’t compare, who really can?

The post Vin Scully’s resume will never be matched by another announcer appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

With Tuesday’s All-Star Game reaching a record-low audience, I began to think about what’s happened over the last 30 years that has turned the highlight of the summer into just another overhyped, underwatched event, and if there was any way to reverse this 30-year trend of viewership declines.

If you wanted to point to the exact season where the All-Star Game began to decline, it probably came in 1997 with the introduction of interleague play. That let fans see players from the other league, though it was just for one series for each team from the corresponding division each year. Instead of playing the same teams every year, five new teams were thrown into the fray for each team.

In 2002, interleague play became even more of a factor. Instead of playing the same division in interleague every year, the divisional opponents got rotated. Just in case you were bored of seeing the same five teams in interleague every year, here’s another five! And a year later, five new ones! Suddenly, fans were getting the opportunity to see all of the teams from the other league over a three-year period. If I was watching the All-Star Game just to see a Bonds, Griffey, McGwire, or Thomas, I now had another opportunity to see those guys.

This was around the time that MLB.tv and MLB Extra Innings started to pick up steam. Extra Innings launched in 1996 on DirecTV and expanded to cable providers in 2001, while MLB.tv launched in 2003. Both services allowed fans to watch out-of-market games. Subscribers no longer needed to wait until a nationally televised game popped up on the schedule to watch baseball’s biggest stars. With a couple of clicks, there they are, live on your screen. If I could watch Ken Griffey Jr play five times a week, why would I need to watch the All-Star Game to see Ken Griffey Jr and other that I can watch with the same ease?

Another body blow for the All-Star Game relates to interleague play, and the Houston Astros’ move to the American League in 2013. That gave each league 15 teams, and turned interleague play into a year-round, every week affair. No long was interleague confined to a chunk of time in the season – there would be at least one interleague game on almost every day of the season. Interleague wasn’t special anymore, and neither was seeing the stars from the other league.

The advent of smartphones and the MLB At Bat app was probably the death blow for the All-Star Game. For an event built so much around “moments” rather than the actual game itself, the ability for fans to click a couple icons on their phone to watch a moment mere minutes after it happened turned the ritual of watching the All-Star Game to not miss moments into a relic of the past. If something awesome happened in the pre-digital age and I missed it, I’d have to hang around until the post-game or SportsCenter to see it again. If an awesome thing happens now and you miss it, you can just open an app or go to a website and see it over and over again.

Can any of this be fixed? I really don’t think so, at the very least until MLB adds two more teams, because it would require undoing so much of the good work MLB has done growing the game and in the digital space over the years. There’s no real way to put the genie back into the bottle when it comes to digital highlights, access to out of market games, streaming, and so on. It would be a suicide mission, sabotaging the sport among younger viewers while also making the game less accessible. That’s counter to the mission the sport has embarked on in recent years, with a mandate to grow the game and expand its younger fanbase.

Tweaking interleague play could have an effect, but at this point in time, I think that’s far lower down the list of items affecting the All-Star Game’s appeal. By adding two more teams, MLB would have 16 in each league, thus eliminating the need for consistent interleague play. But before that happens, baseball is going in the opposite direction starting with the 2023 season, and is actually adding interleague games at the expense of divisional games. That’s probably the smarter, fairer move for the game.

Can anything really be done to improve the All-Star Game’s reputation and viewership? In my mind, the only thing that may pique some interest is a series of rules tweaks to the game, but given how riled up baseball purists get over even minor changes (the outcry over uniforms this year, for example), that could end up hurting the All-Star Game more than helping it.

I think, more than anything else, we should take the All-Star Game down from its pedestal. Instead of treating it as a sacred cow, we should treat it more like the NBA, NFL, and NHL treat their All-Star Games. Instead of focusing so much on the past and the game itself, we should focus on the future and the moments that have made All-Star Games of the past so memorable. The All-Star Game has been slow to change with the times (unlike the Home Run Derby), and I think that’s why its decline has been so damning and sad.

The post Thoughts On The MLB All-Star Game appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

Overall, the three packages represent a small fraction of the 2,430 MLB games scheduled to take place in the 2022 season. YouTube’s deal has a total of 15 games, while Peacock has 18. Apple has the biggest package on the block, with around 50 games on the service (though the exact amount has not been announced, and only the first half of the season’s schedule revealed).

That’s between 3% and 4% of the league’s schedule paywalled. For one team, that’s six games a year, or one per month. Obviously, not every team will fit into that exact framework, but the companies have done a pretty fine job so far of not over or underrepresenting teams – the Braves, Mets, Dodgers, and Yankees are all featured three times apiece, fewer than the Royals and Nationals at five each. That’s an unexpected twist.

But while the streaming deals are receiving quite a bit of scorn from fans appalled that they can’t watch every game whenever they want with subscriptions to just basic cable and MLB.TV, a larger problem is looming for baseball fans. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to watch RSNs in local markets without having a subscription to a specific cable or satellite operator.

If a customer wants to cut the cord and get away from paying cable or satellite companies for bundles that easily exceed $200, their options to watch local sports are quite limited. The Dish-owned Sling prides itself on no longer carrying RSNs. YouTube TV and Hulu only carry the NBC Sports RSNs, while fuboTV carries those, NESN, Marquee, and the AT&T SportsNet RSNs. The only service with access to *all* of the RSNs, including the Sinclair-owned Bally RSNs that locally broadcast many local teams, is DirecTV Stream – and the lowest priced package with access to the RSNs runs $90/month.

A problem arises when those local cable and satellite don’t offer the RSN you need. Dish is the most famous example, setting the tone for Sling by dropping all local sports networks. Sinclair walked a knife-edge with Charter earlier this year, eventually reaching a new carriage deal that included the RSNs after months of tense negotiations. Imagine living in a market where Charter was your only cable option, and your team aired on a Sinclair RSN. If those RSNs got dropped, you’d be utterly screwed, and your only recourse would be to switch to DirecTV – and hope a carriage dispute would never happen.

The long-rumored Sinclair direct to consumer service could flip these issues on their head. It still hasn’t launched (though a 2022 launch is being targeted), and the price point remains a question (I’d be shocked if it ran less than $20 per month). If it does launch, that could help close the gap caused by carriage disputes. And while I am somewhat optimistic about that development, I’m also a bit pessimistic. Will carriers see the DTC’s launch and think “screw it, we’re not paying these carriage fees anymore,” shrinking the distribution of the RSNs? The end result of that could be fans dumping their cable or satellite packages, paying more for standalone (non-bundled) internet, picking up a subscription to a live TV streaming service, and also adding the DTC offering, and paying just as much (if not more) than what they were originally paying prior to the DTC’s launch.

When you look at it that way, maybe having to watch one of your team’s games a month on a streaming service isn’t the biggest deal. The RSN model itself is in a precarious position, and while the money brought in by these streaming deals is a relative drop in the bucket, the low amount of games being shifted to streaming exclusives (which was already happening in some markets when multiple teams in different leagues were playing at the same time) is far from the biggest concern across the MLB media landscape.

The post MLB’s new streaming pacts aren’t ideal, but RSN carriage battles are far more damaging appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

But while this broadcasting carousel is surprising, the changes of employer we’ve seen this year have been a long time coming.

It all goes back to 2016. This was the year where Mike Tirico left ESPN for NBC Sports, which would set NBC’s succession plan into motion and would also throw Monday Night Football into a state of flux.

To replace Tirico, ESPN simply elevated Sean McDonough to the MNF play by play role alongside Jon Gruden, a pairing that never really got off the ground. Meanwhile, Tirico, waiting in the wings to succeed Al Michaels, called select Thursday Night games and hosted in the studio, while adding Notre Dame play by play to his schedule in 2017.

In 2017, CBS jumped into the fray with their hire of Tony Romo to work with Jim Nantz as the network’s top broadcast team. The move was undoubtedly a gamble, but it worked out as well as anyone could have expected – Romo become a broadcasting star for CBS, raising the bar for all NFL broadcasters.

Fox also made a change near the top in 2017, though it wasn’t necessarily their decision. John Lynch left the broadcasting world to become the GM of the 49ers, vacating the analyst spot next to Kevin Burkhardt. Fox promoted Charles Davis up the ladder to become their #2 analyst.

After the 2017 season, Gruden went back into coaching with the Raiders, and McDonough was shifted back to the college football world. Attempting to replicate the success CBS had with Romo, ESPN hired Jason Witten as an MNF analyst, working with Joe Tessitore and Booger McFarland. Saying that the hiring didn’t go well was an understatement: the three-man booth did not gel at all (especially with McFarland calling games from the sideline “Boogermobile”), and MNF broadcasts were a laughingstock in 2018.

2018 was also the year that Fox took over Thursday Night Football, turning Tirico into a studio host and fill-in play by play broadcaster. Fox’s TNF deal also forced Joe Buck and Troy Aikman to increase their workload, calling two games per week throughout much of the season. Fox was reportedly interested in (who else?) Tirico to call the package

The 2019 season was the least interesting in terms of broadcaster movement. Witten went back to playing in the NFL, leaving the pairing of Tessitore and McFarland in the MNF booth. The reception for that duo was better, but still not positive.

Things truly got wild in 2020. Amid interest from ESPN, Romo re-signed with CBS on a huge contract that would set a new watermark for NFL broadcasters. Months later, CBS also nabbed Davis from Fox to be their #2 analyst, replacing Dan Fouts.

Rebuffed by Romo, ESPN once again scrambled their MNF broadcast booth, with the new trio of Steve Levy, Brian Griese, and Louis Riddick taking over. To replace Davis, Fox promoted Daryl Johnston up the ladder, but only on a temporary basis – Greg Olsen would be poised to join the company when he retired, working alongside Burkhardt. In the same boat, Drew Brees was also leaning towards becoming a broadcaster after retirement, but at NBC.

Then we hit 2021. CBS re-signed Nantz and Ian Eagle, the company’s top two play by play broadcasters, to pair long-term with Romo and Davis, respectively. ESPN opted to bring back their full MNF broadcast crew for the first time since 2017. Olsen retired and joined Fox, working with Burkhardt as the company’s #2 team. Brees retired and joined NBC, working in the Sunday night studio and calling Notre Dame games with Tirico.

2021 was also the year where the NFL announced its new TV deals, which included Amazon taking over exclusivity of the Thursday Night Football package. Without the simulcasts on NBC or Fox, Amazon would need its own broadcasters to call the games. Several names were linked, with Michaels and Aikman emerging as front-runners.

Finally, we reach the present day. Michaels has seemingly called his last Sunday Night Football game, with Tirico in line to take over six years after joining NBC. Aikman pivoted from Amazon to ESPN, who was willing to give him an eye-watering salary close to what Romo is making at CBS (which Fox seemingly felt they couldn’t). Following Aikman out the door, somewhat surprisingly, was long-time broadcast partner Buck, giving ESPN a marquee Monday Night Football broadcast team for the first time since Tirico left the company.

With Aikman out of the picture, Amazon is turning to ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit as the analyst for its Thursday Night Football package, though he’ll continue his college football commitments with ESPN. Fox, meanwhile, seems prepared to promote Burkhardt and Olsen to their top team, though rumors of Brees and Sean Payton continue to circle.

And that’s where we are today. CBS locked in their top broadcast teams prior to this year’s chaos, and those contracts helped things unfold the way they did, allowing the network to remain mostly unscathed. ESPN is adding a top-tier broadcast team to Monday Night Football, but it’s still a new one to the company. NBC is (likely) changing their Sunday night booth for the first time in more than a decade. Amazon is probably going with a pair of broadcasters that have never worked together.

The only question left is whether or not the carousel is going to stop spinning any time soon, or if we’re just about at the end.

The post The seeds for this year’s wild NFL broadcaster carousel were planted back in 2016 appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

But let’s put away those bad thoughts, and throw on the rose colored glasses. How could the Times’ purchase of The Athletic help the site offer more value to subscribers? Here are five ways that have come to my mind, which are probably fantasies.

Deeper dives

The Athletic has so many reporters in so many markets across the US, Canada, and the UK. Inevitably following the sale, some will be deemed redundant and let go. But I do think that the stable of reporters at the Times can add plenty of value to The Athletic’s longer form content, and could help enhance and expand deeper dives. If there’s a story that blends sports and politics, tech, entertainment, or whatever else with several leads to chase, perhaps another reporter with closer ties in that area can help out.

It could result in better, more thorough content that normally wouldn’t be able to happen.

Narrative podcasts

In July of 2020, the New York Times bought Serial Productions, the company behind the popular podcast Serial.  This has resulted in the creation of several longer form narrative podcasts, and while that’s a field The Athletic has dabbled in, it could be taken to the next level with help from Serial Productions.

Most of The Athletic’s podcasts are reactionary or interview-based. They had some success with the Beyond the Headline series, but a new edition hasn’t been released since the summer. The company also never expanded it to other sports outside of soccer. There are plenty of stories to be told in audio form across other (American-based) sports and leagues, and it feels like The Athletic has dropped the ball in the podcast space by not telling those stories. ESPN’s 30 for 30 podcast series does it quite well, and The Athletic could be mentioned in the same breath if they put the work into it.

Bundles

I feel like this is the easiest (and most likely) change to implement. Buy a subscription to one site, get a free or discounted one to the other, and vice versa. It’s an easy way to increase the subscriber count for both sites, is less of a financial drain than some of The Athletic’s ludicrous subscription offers, and would probably be easier to swallow for both companies wit both companies now under the same umbrella.

Maybe it’s not $1 per month for a year, but at least you’d be getting more bang for your buck.

Games

The Athletic occasionally does quizzes on their site, but that’s about it when it comes to games. Given the Times’ strength when it comes to crosswords and other daily games, I’d be down with a sports-themed expansion on The Athletic. Sure, simply turning the Times’ standard fare into a more sportsy edition would feel a little weak, but it would be fun for the diehard fan. Additionally, there’s the possibility of creating new games specifically centered around sports. However, it’ll be up to someone else to innovate them.

Documentaries

The Athletic actually had a brief foray into video, with the department headed by Armen Keteyian. The Real Sports-esque features didn’t draw much attention or eyeballs to The Athletic, and the venture was eventually shut down. However, the Times also dabbles in video, and their The New York Times Presents docuseries on FX has received acclaim. It would absolutely make sense for The Athletic to give it another go, even with the expanding market of sports documentaries.

There’s also an appetite for nostalgia that these docs can fill. Vice’s Dark Side of the Ring series was a massive success, and generated a Dark Side of the 90s spinoff. Many recent 30 for 30s have smashed the nostalgia button hard without delving into critical storytelling. The Athletic and the Times could thread that needle to satiate both the desire for nostalgia and the need for vital storytelling.

The post 5 ways The Athletic’s sale to the New York Times might benefit subscribers appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

But from the standpoint of viewers and fans, how much excitement really is there for this edition of the Summer Olympics?

(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)

Personally, I’ve been burned out from sports for months now. Following the live sports shutdown last spring and early summer, we’ve had a year straight of live sports, with baseball, hockey, and basketball seasons overlapping like never before, not to mention college basketball, college football, and the NFL having their seasons take place on their normal spots on the calendar. Normally, with the Olympics taking place in the summer, its only competition is MLB.

This year, the Olympics will be just days removed from the end of the NBA Finals and weeks away from the end of both UEFA Euro and the NHL Stanley Cup Final. Plus, as usual, we’re still in the midst of baseball season, and the start of NFL training camp is fast approaching. So sure, let’s throw in a two-week international sports competition! What could possibly go wrong?

I also feel like there are a lack of marketable stars on Team USA this year for the casual sports fan, especially when compared to prior years. Sure, Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky are competing, as are the world-conquering USWNT soccer team, but that’s really about it. Michael Phelps retired after the 2016 Olympics in Rio. The USMNT (again) did not qualify for the men’s soccer tournament. USA Basketball has a pair of typically strong rosters, but lacks the Dream Team-esque starpower one might expect. The same is true for USA Baseball, with a roster full of minor league prospects, non-prospects, and over the hill former major leaguers.

Oh, and then there’s the elephant in the room – the ongoing pandemic. There will inevitably be positive tests, forcing athletes out of the competition. Spectators for events will be limited, if not outright prohibited, dampening the atmosphere for those watching at home. The pandemic will also force restrictions on broadcasters, as we’ve seen over the last year, and viewers are ultimately the ones who suffer with a worse overall experience. NBC has produced and broadcast many events from their international studios in Connecticut over the years, but it feels like they’ll be doing that more this year.

This is wholly out of NBC’s control, but the Olympics taking place in Tokyo absolutely will doom live viewing. Tokyo is 13 hours ahead of New York, meaning that events taking place in the evening will air on the east coast in the morning, and vice versa. The afternoon events will air in the middle of the night, and how many people are really going to set their alarms in order to watch an event live? That’s partly why Rio de Janeiro, host of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, was such an ideal host city for American viewers. It’s only an hour ahead of the east coast, so scheduling and watching was simple.

Somewhat ominously, we might be having a similar conversation to this in six months time. Because of the postponement of the Olympics last year, we’re now a year closer to the 2022 Winter Olympics, which will begin in Beijing on February 4th. The time difference will still be an issue, the pandemic may still be a very real problem, and a potential US boycott still remains a (slim) possibility, which would deep six any positive attention for the event on NBC.

But hey, at least we have a wide open summer next year to enjoy the World Cup, right? Oh…yeah. Thanks, FIFA.

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There is a lot to unpack in all of the TV deals, but one thing is immediately clear: the NFL clearly values streaming platforms and isn’t afraid of games airing, exclusively or not, on those streaming services.

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Amazon’s deal with the NFL is the most significant from a streaming perspective, which makes sense since Amazon doesn’t have a broadcast or cable network. In Amazon’s new deal with the NFL, Thursday Night Football will exclusively air on Prime Video (except in the local markets of each team involved in the game, though that has been true even when the games only aired on NFL Network). Amazon had streamed TNF since the 2017 season, but games still aired on traditional TV via NFL Network, Fox, CBS, or NBC.

That will no longer be the case. The 15 game TNF package (and one preseason game, in case anyone actually gives a shit about that) will air nationally on Prime Video and Prime Video alone. Amazon got their first taste of an exclusive game last season with a Cardinals-49ers matchup, and they’re getting a much bigger piece of the NFL pie starting with the 2023 season. A cable subscription or antenna won’t be enough anymore if you want to watch one of the NFL’s broadcast windows. If you want to watch TNF each week, you need to get in bed with Amazon.

ESPN is another big winner in the NFL’s embrace of streaming. Starting in 2022, ESPN+ will air one exclusive game per season. This will be one of the NFL’s loathed international games, which take place in the morning stateside, but still – an exclusive game is an exclusive game. ESPN has also gained the ability to simulcast all of their NFL games on ESPN+, which essentially means that if you subscribe to ESPN+ but don’t subscribe to cable, you can still stream ESPN’s live NFL games. That’s quite significant, since with most marquee sporting events, you need that authenticated login in order to stream it.

NBC is in a similar boat to ESPN, because Peacock will stream all Sunday Night Football and playoff games in their new TV deal. Again, this is massive: no broadcast login, no problem. If you ponied up for Peacock just to watch The Office on a loop, you get live NFL games now too. Contrast that to NBC’s coverage of the Premier League – some live games are Peacock exclusive, and some can only be streamed on the NBC Sports app with a login. Now, either/or is sufficient. Peacock will also get one exclusive game per season starting in 2023, and is adding a whole bunch of NFL Films content. Peacock is now looking like a tempting subscription option for NFL fans.

Not to be left out is Paramount+, the recently rebranded streaming service owned by ViacomCBS. All of the CBS playoff games will be streamed on Paramount+, as will their regular season games. I’m assuming there will be a geolocation feature that locks you in to your local game, but again, streamers are getting access to live NFL games without an authenticated login.

If there’s a big loser In the streaming wars of the new NFL TV deals, it’s Fox, if only because their streaming service (Tubi, which Fox bought last year) is free. Putting live NFL games on a free, ad-supported streaming service doesn’t come with the potential benefits of putting live NFL games on a subscription streaming service, and thus, it’s not happening. Tubi will have to make do with condensed games and other on demand NFL programming, which it gains with Fox’s new TV deal.

I think the new TV deals have spotlighted a blind spot Fox has had for the last couple of years. While ESPN was building up ESPN+, CBS was cultivating All-Access and eventually rebranding and marketing it as Paramount+, and NBC was getting behind Peacock, Fox went in with Tubi. Tubi’s model is simple (free, but ads), and it wouldn’t surprise me if it eventually evolved to more closely resemble a tiered system with subscription fees. And if Fox wants to continue to compete in the growing streaming revolution, that will need to happen, otherwise the network will be left behind its competitors – and don’t think that various leagues aren’t paying attention to what’s happening in the streaming landscape.

But aside from with TNF, a package that three of the NFL’s four TV partners have had a go with, the NFL has managed to balance itself close to perfectly between the more traditional cable and broadcast model and the somewhat more radical streaming model. If streaming services collapse over the next decade, the NFL still has its established TV partnerships to lean back on. If customers continue to cut the cord, dump cable, and refuse to buy antennae, the streaming components included in these deals will allow fans to still watch the NFL without relying on satellite or cable companies.

The NFL is an outlier among the major American sports because of its limited game inventory and its independence from regional sports networks. But the way that the league has been able to balance its future reliance on broadcast and streaming in these TV deals has been impressive, and it will be tough to see any contender dislodging the league from its place at the top of the American sports landscape.

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The question everyone has been asking is “why?,” and while it still hasn’t been answered, the easy answer is “money, duh.” The pandemic wreaked havoc on the finances of many companies, and Comcast was one of them. NBC Sports in particular took a hit from the postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to this summer, and also suffered through a horrible patch of NHL ratings when the league put together its summer bubble in Canada.

But the issues with NBCSN ran deeper than the pandemic. Their live sports library remained remarkably consistent. In 2013, the network aired the Premier League, MLS, NHL regular season and playoff games, the Tour de France, the Summer and Winter Olympics, IndyCar, Formula 1, and various horse racing and golf events. They lost MLS and F1, and added NASCAR and more golf, horse racing, Olympic sports, rugby, and motorsports content.

Instead of diversifying their lineup, NBC seemingly doubled down on the sports they already had in the fold. That’s all well and good, but instead of attracting new viewers, the network simply became more of a hub for the viewer base it had.

Furthermore, NBCSN wasn’t used to promote the top NBC Sports talent. I can’t think of one time that Bob Costas, Al Michaels, or Cris Collinsworth showed up on the network outside of an interview on the Dan Patrick Show or Pro Football Talk. Wouldn’t it have made sense to highlight your top on-air talents?

Another main failing of NBCSN was its lack of content unrelated to live programming. By and large, the network’s programming has been live events and the pregame and postgame shows for those events. There seemingly wasn’t much of a strategy to build up personalities and brands outside of that live programming. I’m not saying that NBC needed to go full-blown “embrace debate,” but at least give me a reason to watch the network if I’m not watching a game. Instead, NBC filled their schedule with compelling content like hours of poker, auto auctions, outdoor activities, and reruns of live events. Keep in mind, they weren’t running this content overnight – they were running it in the middle of the day and even in primetime! Why would I want to watch *this* sports network where there are several others talking about current news, opining about that news, or even (gasp) airing live games?

NBC also failed to take advantage of its RSNs in markets scattered across the country. Sure, the network itself doesn’t have rights to the NBA or MLB, but it wouldn’t hurt to at least talk about them, perhaps in an Around the Horn style show with writers or reporters from those RSNs, plus NBC’s (now largely stripped down) blogs and analysts from the sports they do have the rights to. An NBC Sports talk show might not have been the best idea, but the network never even seemed to consider it again after Michelle Beadle’s brief run at The Crossover ended in disastrous fashion. If you go to the well twice, as NBC did with The Crossover and its predecessor, NBC SportsTalk, and fail, you shouldn’t completely abandon the strategy. NBC did, and for the rest of NBCSN’s life, the focus was almost exclusively on the live events, for better or worse.

I also felt like there were plenty of opportunities to augment Premier League coverage, which NBC let fall by the wayside. The network had numerous opportunities to acquire rights to the FA Cup, League Cup, and both the UEFA Champions League and Europa League. They missed out each time. Acquiring rights to those competitions would have allowed NBCSN to fill broadcast slots in times when they’re not airing live events (midday Tuesday-Thursday for the UEFA competitions, various weekends and midday, mid-week slots for the cups) or when the Premier League doesn’t have a matchweek. NBCSN wouldn’t have been saved if they were able to air a match like Marine-Tottenham, but it would have at least showed that the company was dedicated to improving and expanding its offerings, rather than trotting out mostly the same Premier League coverage for yet another season.

The worst part about NBCSN shutting down is that, despite everything I’ve outlined above, the network wasn’t (and isn’t) some sort of failure. Sure, it’s not pulling ESPN-level numbers, but over the last three years, it’s been duking it out with ESPN2 and FS1 for the label of “America’s second most-watched sports network.” But so much of that strength was built on live events, and the future of two of those leagues (the Premier League and NHL) is up in the air, with TV deals expiring over the next year-plus for both sports. Losing either would scrape away a sizeable chunk of NBCSN’s programming. Losing both would be a fatal blow, especially when the next round of carriage negotiations with providers come up.

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