Bally Sports Networks Preparing for bankruptcy

[Major League Ready]

The article linked below has more details.   This will be a mess short-term but this bankruptcy may also facilitate a much better long-term solution.  You have to believe the league will seek more control and this may provide an opportunity to do so.  TV revenue might be less in the long run but the teams will adapt quickly and cut player salaries commensurate with the decrease in revenue.  However, fans might actually be better served.

Sinclair Bankruptcy Article

[nicksaviking]

7 hours ago, Vanimal46 said:

They do that today and they have over 3.5 million out of market fans subscribed. 

That's not nearly enough subscribers to keep this thing moving. That's 116K fans per team average, and the big markets will be weighing that down for the mid market teams. So what, 80-90K Twins fans tops? That seems ridiculously high actually. Advertisers won't keep ponying up for that kind of volume. They'll get more eyes on a five minute, mid-level Youtuber video.

They need to get on the already established streamers. All the teams, all the time. You'd get more people to pay $3 more per month for their Hulu account to watch baseball, than you will charging them $30 per month for a baseball only channel.

[NotAboutWinning]

54 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

That's not nearly enough subscribers to keep this thing moving. That's 116K fans per team average, and the big markets will be weighing that down for the mid market teams. So what, 80-90K Twins fans tops? That seems ridiculously high actually. Advertisers won't keep ponying up for that kind of volume. They'll get more eyes on a five minute, mid-level Youtuber video.

They need to get on the already established streamers. All the teams, all the time. You'd get more people to pay $3 more per month for their Hulu account to watch baseball, than you will charging them $30 per month for a baseball only channel.

That would be an good reset back to where we were 6-7 years ago. Before Sinclair obscenely over paid for the RSNs, leveraged them to the hilt, raised the carriage fees and pissed off the streaming services.

[nicksaviking]

1 hour ago, NotAboutWinning said:

That would be a good reset back to where we were 6-7 years ago. Before Sinclair obscenely over paid for the RSNs, leveraged them to the hilt, raised the carriage fees and pissed off the streaming services.

Yeah, and I know for most of the owners it’s really about banking as much money now, not ten years from now. But they need to divorce themselves from those instincts or there won’t be a league in 20 years.

[DJL44]

12 hours ago, nicksaviking said:

That's not nearly enough subscribers to keep this thing moving. That's 116K fans per team average

116,000 out of market fans. Those numbers would certainly climb if in-market fans could subscribe to watch their favorite team.

[DJL44]

Good article at Fangraphs

Diamond Sports Group’s Bankruptcy Could Rock the Baseball Revenue Boat | FanGraphs Baseball

Quote

"it’s a shocking turn of events for a company that made more than $2 billion in revenues in the first nine months of 2022, and more than $3 billion in 2021"

There is plenty of revenue here, even as cable subscriptions decline.

Quote

"Scour the prospectus for one of the notes they issued, and you’ll find 22 references to bankruptcy, as well as an interest rate that assumed some chance of default."

Everyone knew this was possible and should have planned for that contingency.

Quote

Prudential Financial (side note: “It was an insurance run, so I hit it to the Prudential Building” is one of my favorite baseball quotes of all time), Fidelity, and Mudrick Capital are among the chief bond holders. They’ll likely sell off the company after it emerges from bankruptcy and restructuring.

In 2021, DSG was profitable before interest payments, taxes, depreciation, and amortization – they recorded a positive EBITDA

The business is profitable, but not profitable enough to cover $430M in debt payments every year. I think they can easily ask for $4-5B after bankruptcy restructuring.

The best fit for this content is ESPN - they have the cable contracts and the streaming platform already in place.

[TwinsDr2021]

15 hours ago, nicksaviking said:

That's not nearly enough subscribers to keep this thing moving. That's 116K fans per team average, and the big markets will be weighing that down for the mid market teams. So what, 80-90K Twins fans tops? That seems ridiculously high actually. Advertisers won't keep ponying up for that kind of volume. They'll get more eyes on a five minute, mid-level Youtuber video.

They need to get on the already established streamers. All the teams, all the time. You'd get more people to pay $3 more per month for their Hulu account to watch baseball, than you will charging them $30 per month for a baseball only channel.

💯, zero chance I pay anything additional outside of my hulu and netflix to watch baseball. Wouldn't cancel hulu over a $3 monthly increase to watch the Twins.

To me the biggest problem is it is has been a few years that streamers haven't seen the Twins and we/I have figured other ways to get my twins fix.

Sent a quick email to my fantasy baseball league (12 players, between ages 38-70) and asked what they would be willing to pay a month to watch the Twins if they can't now, 9 of 12 stream and the answers were between $0 and $7 a month, and only 2 of the 9 said they pay something outside of their Hulu or youtube.

[Vanimal46]

3 hours ago, DJL44 said:

116,000 out of market fans. Those numbers would certainly climb if in-market fans could subscribe to watch their favorite team.

Yep. They could conservatively 5x the amount of subscribers without the archaic local blackout rules in place. 

[Musk21]

NBA League Pass is only $99 for a full season (I paid $49 on Black Friday) but also has the silly local blackout rules. I might pay double if I could watch the Wolves too.

Like Vanimal said, there should be different price points.

• All MLB (including local team)
• Local MLB team & MiLB affliates
• Local MLB team only
• Annual price vs monthly price
• Ad-Free option

[AussieG]

I live in Australia and have limited options. In 2022 I just subbed to MLB.TV for $142.99 US ($203 AU). Hopefully it doesn't all go to crap and I can still get a 2023 subscription. Do you guys know if MLB.TV will be affected by the Bally sports situation? 

[Major League Ready]

1 hour ago, Musk21 said:

NBA League Pass is only $99 for a full season (I paid $49 on Black Friday) but also has the silly local blackout rules. I might pay double if I could watch the Wolves too.

Like Vanimal said, there should be different price points.

• All MLB (including local team)
• Local MLB team & MiLB affliates
• Local MLB team only
• Annual price vs monthly price
• Ad-Free option

This bankruptcy will hopefully provide the league / teams with an opportunity to develop better options.  TV coverage has hurt the league enough that you would have to believe they will take this opportunity to position the long-term interests of the league and fans.  

[DJL44]

37 minutes ago, AussieG said:

I live in Australia and have limited options. In 2022 I just subbed to MLB.TV for $142.99 US ($203 AU). Hopefully it doesn't all go to crap and I can still get a 2023 subscription. Do you guys know if MLB.TV will be affected by the Bally sports situation? 

I doubt it. Bally Sports will continue to produce programming so they can generate revenue. They're just not paying back debtors.

[August J Gloop]

AppleTV+ (or another streamer) would be the best spot for RSNs. I like Apple because of the high quality streaming. They could upgrade the broadcasts to match the gorgeous ATV games. Apple could use the RSN thing as a regional subscriber keep. (Folks are less likely to cancel when there's consistently new programming even when it's not specifically of interest to them.) It would 'free' to get your RSN with an ATV+ plus sub. They could then target new fans on the sub with short vids and other fun things, which would create more folks who just stay subscribed to watch this thing they like more than they used to cuz Jose Miranda is so funny (for example). Hulu or just plain Youtube probably make a lot of sense, too. 

[AussieG]

12 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

I doubt it. Bally Sports will continue to produce programming so they can generate revenue. They're just not paying back debtors.

Ok thanks

[Richie the Rally Goat]

On 1/29/2023 at 1:31 PM, Trov said:

The reason it did not work out is because no cable network would carry the product, mainly because they were FOX back then and FOX said carry FSN and not Victory or you will not get any of the FOX channels.  Now FOX is basically out of sports and most other TV.  

I have no clue who may be able to step now though.  Everyone on here just assumes someone will pick up the rights, but if it is true Bally owes so much for TV rights, not many broadcasting companies will be able to take on that.  This is a much bigger story and people on here may think.  We actually may not be seeing too many games this year if something is not worked out soon during bankruptcy.  

I wonder if this will start to be a fall of some of these TV deals that so many leagues were touting, and paying huge sums to players because of.  Now the bills are due by the TV stations for those rights and they cannot pay it.  There was talks awhile back that Twins should be up for a good contract soon, but maybe they will not have any TV money coming in soon. 

You’re right. No one cares because most of us can’t watch the Twins anyways. The more it hurts the Twins and the MLB, the more likely a big change for the better

[howeda7]

On 1/28/2023 at 10:26 AM, mnfireman said:

The MLB television package just uses the RSN feed, no Bally Sports Network, no Twins...

The games will be available. It's unlikely Bally's will cease operations before the end of the 2023 season. If somehow that happens, the Twins will immediately take their rights back. They already produce the games. When Victory Sports One folded, they were back on Fox Sports North the very next day.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

On 1/29/2023 at 7:34 PM, nicksaviking said:

That's not nearly enough subscribers to keep this thing moving. That's 116K fans per team average, and the big markets will be weighing that down for the mid market teams. So what, 80-90K Twins fans tops? That seems ridiculously high actually. Advertisers won't keep ponying up for that kind of volume. They'll get more eyes on a five minute, mid-level Youtuber video.

They need to get on the already established streamers. All the teams, all the time. You'd get more people to pay $3 more per month for their Hulu account to watch baseball, than you will charging them $30 per month for a baseball only channel.

How many of the 3.5m are Yankees or Dodgers fans out of market? 2.5m? 3? It’s more like 20k per team and 2.5m Yankees fans.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

41 minutes ago, howeda7 said:

The games will be available. It's unlikely Bally's will cease operations before the end of the 2023 season. If somehow that happens, the Twins will immediately take their rights back. They already produce the games. When Victory Sports One folded, they were back on Fox Sports North the very next day.

And the Pohlads own tv/movie production companies. How long until they crank up VS1 again? I bet it’s already in the works. Joe becoming owner head guy wasn’t a fluke/accident. The Twins saw this coming

[NotAboutWinning]

5 hours ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

And the Pohlads own tv/movie production companies. How long until they crank up VS1 again? I bet it’s already in the works. Joe becoming owner head guy wasn’t a fluke/accident. The Twins saw this coming

Very interesting point!

[August J Gloop]

12 hours ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

And the Pohlads own tv/movie production companies. How long until they crank up VS1 again? I bet it’s already in the works. Joe becoming owner head guy wasn’t a fluke/accident. The Twins saw this coming

Thinking more about it, the Wolves, Wild and Loons could hop in with the Twins to launch some sort of Midwest Sports Channel (so original) that can carry their games. They can use the bankruptcy proceedings to get out of their contract. Then they can offer that as some sort of streaming package. They could run more high school stuff and keep the Due Norths of the world going. From a team standpoint they see revenue from broadcast. For the combined teams are there 2.5 million people in the greater midwest who would pay 10 bucks a month to have such a streaming service? That's roughly speaking where they would have to sit to get the same cash back.

These MLB teams should just use this opportunity to rethink what broadcasting their games actually is. It's not revenue. It's advertising the live products. The Game is a product. The Jerseys are products. If they built the relationships with the fans, they'd sell out every game because people would want to be there. Right now it's actively hard and expensive and wasteful to watch the team. The message to most casual fans is: if you don't commit you should get out. You can imagine what most of those folks do. 

If instead, they considered the free transmission of the game as a standard practice with basic monetization of the traditional ad segments to cover production, they'd be selling so many more tickets, they'd get that 40 Million back. Currently TF sits half full. filling it back up every night at a reduced ticket price gets them there easily. 

And considering they'd be free on youtube and MLB's platform, they'd get tons of eyeballs, and likely actually be making money on those ads within a couple seasons.  Heck 8 Million people watch celebrities eat spicy wings every week. I'm guessing free major league baseball would have no problem building a loyal audience. 

[Parfigliano]

On 1/28/2023 at 9:57 AM, Mike Sixel said:

People aren't going to pay insane money to watch MLB. They just aren't. 

Define insane.

[Parfigliano]

On 1/29/2023 at 3:40 PM, I wish the twins were good said:

They either bought the networks needing an unrealistic amount of revenue to service the debt and/or remain profitable after licensing fees, or they are so unbelievably greedy and shortsighted they'd rather bankrupt the whole enterprise rather than negotiate fairly with the distributors, or some combination of both. Me thinks the people running this are not so smart... Good riddance 

I would go with unbelievably greedy.

[DJL44]

21 hours ago, August J Gloop said:

Thinking more about it, the Wolves, Wild and Loons could hop in with the Twins to launch some sort of Midwest Sports Channel (so original) that can carry their games. They can use the bankruptcy proceedings to get out of their contract. Then they can offer that as some sort of streaming package. They could run more high school stuff and keep the Due Norths of the world going. From a team standpoint they see revenue from broadcast. For the combined teams are there 2.5 million people in the greater midwest who would pay 10 bucks a month to have such a streaming service? That's roughly speaking where they would have to sit to get the same cash back.

Saw this in a different thread about this topic elsewhere:

Quote

Sportsnet here in Canada (exclusive home of the Jays, has a lot of Raptors and misc. hockey games) can be streamed for $15 a month, $150 a year.

If Sportsnet Canada can make it work at that price point it should work here as well.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I see a lot of people are claiming RSNs in their current state are financially unviable and it's not clear that's the case. What Sinclair did was take on massive amounts of debt to buy the RSNs, after which Covid happened then inflation happened. It's likely their interest rates on this debt skyrocketed and when coupled with decreased income due to Covid (along with their asinine decisions re: streaming platforms), it all came home to roost in a hurry.

I'm not defending the current RSN system - from a user perspective, it's ****ing awful - but I'm not entirely convinced it's financially broken, at least not yet. It will be someday but I'm not convinced we're quite at that day.

[Linus]

3 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I see a lot of people are claiming RSNs in their current state are financially unviable and it's not clear that's the case. What Sinclair did was take on massive amounts of debt to buy the RSNs, after which Covid happened then inflation happened. It's likely their interest rates on this debt skyrocketed and when coupled with decreased income due to Covid (along with their asinine decisions re: streaming platforms), it all came home to roost in a hurry.

I'm not defending the current RSN system - from a user perspective, it's ****ing awful - but I'm not entirely convinced it's financially broken, at least not yet. It will be someday but I'm not convinced we're quite at that day.

I was curious about this. I believe the Bally RSNs cover half or less of the mlb teams. What is happening in those other markets and is it working?  

[MABB1959]

Just got an email yesterday from YouTube TV saying they were not able to come to terms with MLB and will not show any MLB games.  Is the MLB that money hungry that they will make games not accessible to fans?

[August J Gloop]

13 minutes ago, MABB1959 said:

Just got an email yesterday from YouTube TV saying they were not able to come to terms with MLB and will not show any MLB games.  Is the MLB that money hungry that they will make games not accessible to fans?

Do you mean mlb network? I doubt youtubeTV would be trying to add an OTT blackout to MLB games on networks they still carry. 

[MABB1959]

2 hours ago, August J Gloop said:

Do you mean mlb network? I doubt youtubeTV would be trying to add an OTT blackout to MLB games on networks they still carry. 

Here is the email:

We have been working hard to renew our deal with the MLB Network to continue carrying their content on YouTube TV. However, we have been unable to reach an agreement, and starting today, January 31, 2023, MLB Network content will no longer be available on YouTube TV. You will also lose access to any previous Library recordings from this channel. Members will be able to continue watching select national MLB games via coverage on FOX, ESPN, and TBS through our Base Plan. We also provide the flexibility to pause or cancel your membership anytime.

‌

We apologize for the news and will continue conversations with the MLB to advocate on your behalf, in the hope of restoring their content on YouTube TV.