Youtubetv

[KirbyHawk75]

Just got an email that youtubetv will no longer have MLB network.  With no Bally I am not watching much baseball this summer I guess.

[AceWrigley]

[CRF]

I don't think I like the way things seem to be trending on this. 

[Irishman]

13 hours ago, KirbyHawk75 said:

Just got an email that youtubetv will no longer have MLB network.  With no Bally I am not watching much baseball this summer I guess.

You can come to stadium to watch games.   But I won't watch.  I prefer college games.  

[wsnydes]

When I cut the cord and went to Hulu a few years ago, the lack of MLB Network hit me a lot harder than I thought it would.  It was always my weekend morning coffee programming.  If they're going to start pulling back on its distribution too, that doesn't bode well for getting wider game distribution.

[Byrdman]

Just get the bally sports north streaming monthly subscription(20$ or 190$ for the year).  Now you can watch all Minnesota sports.  

[August J Gloop]

1 hour ago, Byrdman said:

Just get the bally sports north streaming monthly subscription(20$ or 190$ for the year).  Now you can watch all Minnesota sports.  

The Twins will not be available on the Bally sports streaming app unless you also have a pay tv provider that carries BSN. Bally thought they'd have it worked out but so far, no dice. 

[gman]

I just watch it on the MLB channel using roku.

[Bigfork Twins Guy]

50 minutes ago, gman said:

I just watch it on the MLB channel using roku.

The Twins? I had heard that if you subscribe to the MLB channel you get every game EXCEPT the Twins.  Is there some trick using Roku to get their games through the MLB channel that you can enlighten us on?

[DJL44]

1 hour ago, August J Gloop said:

The Twins will not be available on the Bally sports streaming app unless you also have a pay tv provider that carries BSN. Bally thought they'd have it worked out but so far, no dice. 

I'm not sure MLB wants to work it out. They might be better off bankrupting Sinclair and finding a new partner who actually gets their product distributed to a wide audience.

[gman]

1 hour ago, Bigfork Twins Guy said:

The Twins? I had heard that if you subscribe to the MLB channel you get every game EXCEPT the Twins.  Is there some trick using Roku to get their games through the MLB channel that you can enlighten us on?

Probably not. I live and work generally outside their blackout zone. I travel a lot for work and take my roku on the road and watch games in hotels. But I also see a lot of their games in visiting ballparks.

[Fire Dan Gladden]

Regional programming and the lack of a true national tv contract is going to be the death of baseball.  Owners will not be willing to make that change until it is too late

[August J Gloop]

1 hour ago, Bigfork Twins Guy said:

The Twins? I had heard that if you subscribe to the MLB channel you get every game EXCEPT the Twins.  Is there some trick using Roku to get their games through the MLB channel that you can enlighten us on?

His trick might be not living in the broadcast area. Or maybe he VPNs his roku externally? 

[August J Gloop]

58 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

I'm not sure MLB wants to work it out. They might be better off bankrupting Sinclair and finding a new partner who actually gets their product distributed to a wide audience.

You are correct. They don't want to keep doing blackouts on MLBTV so Sinclair can turn around and do streaming. Some of the teams couldn't stop them due to contact language, but most of the Bally's RSNs have language in their MLB contracts that exempted them from being available for that. 

No doubt the teams would rather strangle Sinclair and take back their rights so they could just sell direct through MLB.tv. I bet something like $5 a month extra to get your team would be a game changer for them. I'm sure each market would have 250K subs a season minimum. If they could get to 1M subs in the Twins' market (might be hard since estimates show 14-20 Million subs for mlb.tv total) they'd cover that lost revenue.

This is why I think they need to reconsider trying to get paid for the broadcast and think more about being paid by the broadcast. If they own it, all the ad revenue comes to them. They control the platform, so having live ticket agent links via QR code or in the chat would be do able. "Hey MLB, send me that Joe Ryan Jersey". Create more fans by inviting them to watch for free on their mobile devices, and they'll buy your gear and come to your games. 

[Ryan Atkins]

Living in Dallas, TX, I am fortunate to be able to watch nearly every Twins game live on MLB.TV for a rather modest cost. No need for cable or satellite tv contracts. I only pay my ISP and select streaming services like MLB.TV.

But I will say that MLB seems to do a terrible job of making sure their product is readily and easily available to anyone who wants to consume it. All the other leagues seem to have figured this out.

And their blackout rules are archaic and geographically "dumb". When I said am able to watch nearly every Twins game, that is true except for blackouts. MIN vs. TEX (ok, I get this one) and MIN vs. HOU are blacked out. The latter is ridiculous because I have no access to local Houston broadcasts, and it would take me 5 hours to drive to a game in Houston.

[mac098]

This is the death of baseball to the youth of today. As a kid growing up, I was able to watch baseball all summer on FSN, which was provided with our TV package. Now, BSN+ isn't allowing us to watch our local teams w/o a current TV provider that has access to that team. No wonder why kids nowadays only want to play basketball, football, or soccer. They can easily watch those games without having to worry much. 

A few different options need to happen. 1.) MLB.TV needs to eliminate blackouts for local sports teams. I've been able to see the Saints on TV more than the Twins. 2.) BSN+ needs to allow the local sports teams on there without having a TV subscription. 3.) The Twins/Wolves/Wild need to partner with a local channel to have their games played on there. The Vikings do it, I don't see why the other major sports teams can't do that. 4.) Twins need to make their own network (similar to the Yanks and YES) and have that available on TV packages for people to watch. There is enough history and enough games for them to always have something be playing on that channel.

Just my 2 cents.

[D. Hocking]

1 hour ago, mac098 said:

This is the death of baseball to the youth of today. As a kid growing up, I was able to watch baseball all summer on FSN,

Heck - ten to 15 years ago you did not even need cable to watch the weekend games on channel 29.  You also used to be able to catch a fair amount of the Wild games that way as well.  [Just saw you addressed that in your point 3.)]

They really have made it harder to watch pro sports in general without cable except for the NFL and even there, you cannot watch MNF which for years was on ABC.

[Byrdman]

MLB knows it is a issue.  Mostly what i am reading is MLB is waiting for the bankruptcy to happen so they take back the rights of the teams.  MLB/NHL/NBA are going to team up and create packages etc so you can stream anywhere, any time, with out blackouts.   Lets hope this is true.  My family can finally drop direct TV.  Now that the football package is on youtube now. 

As a follow up you can always do MLB.TV and a VPN and watch the twins.  

Edited February 1, 2023 by Byrdman
More info

[Cris E]

There are a lot of problems with MLB taking back the games and selling an online package to replace the revenue. 

1. There are a bunch of folks who like baseball on TV and don't want to have to go to the computer to see a game. You want some TV outlet for this large community to spend their money on. In the past there were way more TV people than computer people so the online was the add-on, and I expect that's going to continue to be the case for a while. Plus bar owners are going to need a way to put this on the TVs reliably and cable works.

2. Local revenue is large. Even in small markets like MN it's $40-60m per season and it runs into nine digits in the big city. If you could get 1m subs at $50 apiece you could replace the Twins' RSN money one for one, but that's hardly a given. The US Census says there are 2.2m households in all of MN, so you'd need a lot of bar owners and out of state viewers to offset the vast number of people who won't spend money to see baseball.  I'd bet they'd place that single-team monthly charge much closer to $12-20 than $5, but that's high enough to drive away the casual buyers and low enough to wreck the MLB TV money that runs $20 per month. A tough nut to crack unless you can tie the RSN to a cable TV package where a large number of users end up buying it even though they don't want it. 

3. Revenue sharing would have to continue being a thing as long as the contracts are sold locally.  If you centralize the money you'd have to find a way to preserve the income disparity that's currently baked into the revenue models. The big money owners are not going to yield to the little guys on this. The Yankees are not going to let anyone just give out the money in 30 equal chunks like the NFL does because in baseball the Brewers don't bring in anything like the money the Packers do. They owners will try to preserve the local sales model of the RSNs if for no other reason than to avoid this fight and preserve the status quo.