Amazon/Diamond Sports Deal Could be Game-Changer for Twins' TV and Payroll

[Doctor Wu]

No idea if this rumor/announcement will happen, but assuming that there is a sincere attempt at getting it done, just how long will such a deal take to get finalized? Those of you with some knowledge of the broadcasting industry may know the timeline, I certainly don't. But this off-season will basically be over in 1 more month, and I'm very skeptical that any sort of new TV deal will happen in time for the Twins front office to have more money spend on free agents. So basically, I still see us as non-participants for any free agent bidding wars. 

[Major League Ready]

13 hours ago, Steve Lein said:

I don't see how this improves the Twins situation from what they had with the $55MIL TV deal? Sure, it probably leads to more than the $0 they currently have to be added to their books (and maybe the point here), but is it even in the realm of possibility that the amount is going to come close to that number? I thought the Twins already had one of the worst TV deals out there (while still being overpaid by Diamond, as it obviously was not profitable for them), what am I missing to see how this improve on that? Relatively speaking, nobody subscribes to $20/25 per month sports streaming services.

MLB.tv relies on die-hard fans that are out-of-market of their favorite teams, and they have less than 4 million total subscribers. What would you expect that number to be for Twins fans? 500K as a very optimistic estimate? That doesn't equal anything close to $55 Million, and I'd be surprised if any ad or other associated revenue would make up for it. I'd love to know how I'm wrong if I am, or what I'm missing 🤣 Is the expectation here to get like $30 MIL and think everything is still okay? That still leads to a lower payroll, right?

You are not accounting for advertising revenue.  The streaming fees are a relatively small portion of the value of broadcasting rights.  The broadcasting fee paid to a team is going to be a product of any streaming fees plus advertising revenue minus operating costs and profit.   

As for the fees, $120/year seems relatively modest.  That's quite a bit less than the average family spends to attend one game.  They could also sell packages that would not require fans to purchase rights to the entire season.

[Johnny Ringo]

I used to deal with bankruptcies professionally. 

Now I know how a doctor must feel when they watch Grey's Anatomy.  

Holy smokes. But it means we are getting Jordan Montgomery, right?

I'm amazed you don't save this good stuff for the Patreon feed. 

[Whitey333]

The Twins promised three years ago they would find a solution to twins broadcasts quickly.  With bally sports not available on most systems for years, most Twins fans have been left in the dark.  The Twins didn't keep their promise then.  I don't expect them to now.  

[Heiny]

I don't know and I don't care who broadcasts the games.  What I do care about is where they broadcast to and how much it is going to cost the average fan.  As I see it, MLB "should" be in total control. It is their product.  But, between greed and incompetancy, I'm guessing that they will not figure it out to the majority of fans liking!  For heavens sake please keep Manfred out of the negotiations.  Here's an idea.  Make all games, MLB and MiLB available via some streaming entity, MLBtv?  No blackouts anywhere.  Charge a monthly or annual subscription fee that the average fan can afford.  Big baseball fans like myself will subscribe.  Make an option for those who want to subscribe to teams A la Carte.  You will have all the baseball fans you can handle.  I will still go to the games live, because that's just a totally different experience.  At least for me considering I have to drive 3-1/2 hour to the cities.  But remember, if you get greedy you will lose customers.  Divvy up the income any way you want to between the teams,  but make baseball available.  Please, please tell me why this is so difficult to figure out.  You have a product that people want to buy!!!  Sell it to them!!!  Make billions of dollars!!!  I don't see why that can't work out.

[August J Gloop]

13 hours ago, old nurse said:

$20 a month for a 7 month season is $140 500k subscribers would be a gross of 70 million.  How much ones it cost to produce a game? 55 people at 100K is 5.5 million   

TL/DR - It's really expensive and teams are most likely going to be losing money on broadcast without RSNs to help. 

Let's just say that there's personnel cost of 60 people per MLB team who wouldn't be paid if there were no broadcast. Those individual pay rates would vary by market and a bunch of other factors, but for our discussion let's just grab at a figure that will likely be way too low. And it's probably more than 60 people since we're just guessing and i can't find any consistent data on broadcast crews.  Anyhow.

The average salary of our fake broadcast team will be 100K per season. 60 mil / 81. 740,740.74 per game for people. We have to consider benefits and insurance and all the other things that come with having people running around with cables and electricity. It's very quickly up to 1M for human costs to put on a baseball game. 

Now we have to consider all the non-human costs. Electricity, equipment depreciation and damage, media licensing (gotta pay to use Song 2 in your bump),  and a bunch of other things us non production types haven't thought of will bring the cost easily up to 1.5M per game at any stadium. So that's 121,500,00. The Twins haven't had to worry about that since they were essentially just selling the product that this expensive production were pointing their cameras at. They just planned to play and get around 150M from the two deals (local and national). 

So for the Twins, they need to generate 370M for their home season. We'll consider the road games lost money as it's likely a way everything will balance out. The road team will kick in 30% or something to the production, who knows how that breaks out, but for our dirty calcs we'll just say revenue needs to be that 370 figure for the Twins to get back to the Bally levels.

We're back to guessing how many people will subscribe. Let's just make a quick table. The subscribers will average 7 months to smooth out cancels and late adds

FANS----REV at $5per month----15---25

100K  --- 3,500,000 (eek) --- 10,500,000 (uhoh) --- 17,500,000 (I think we get the point)

T0 get a cost that people are likely to pay at the numbers they need, subs can't be more than 7.50  a month. Streaming data is clear on that. Unless you're Netflix, that's the ceiling where you lose subscribers en masse. 

Each team needs to average 7 million subscribers on various platforms at 7.50. This can't be done.

Before you say, AJG you forgot ad revenue. I'll ask you to consider how many commercials you actually saw during broadcasts. Dairy Queen, car insurance and ads for the short boys. Even on YES, the ad revenue is not that great. They make up for it in 24 hour volume. (And the yankees only own 26% of YES). Even if teams can (they can't) subsidize 2.50 (and then only charge 5 per), it's still an impossible number for each team on their own.

Which is why I'm so skeptical of AMZN's motives here. For AMZN, consolidating all the streaming into a tidy worldwide package where they need to consider a worldwide viewership value of 32 Million people? That doesn't seem nearly as crazy. Since for them it could be more fuzzy when you consider other factors like injecting ads for AMZN services, bundling it with prime, so on, etc. Owning the streaming rights for these 5 teams just doesn't make any sense unless it's just step one to becoming the only MLB network. 

[Fatbat]

1 hour ago, Heiny said:

I don't know and I don't care who broadcasts the games.  What I do care about is where they broadcast to and how much it is going to cost the average fan.  As I see it, MLB "should" be in total control. It is their product.  But, between greed and incompetancy, I'm guessing that they will not figure it out to the majority of fans liking!  For heavens sake please keep Manfred out of the negotiations.  Here's an idea.  Make all games, MLB and MiLB available via some streaming entity, MLBtv?  No blackouts anywhere.  Charge a monthly or annual subscription fee that the average fan can afford.  Big baseball fans like myself will subscribe.  Make an option for those who want to subscribe to teams A la Carte.  You will have all the baseball fans you can handle.  I will still go to the games live, because that's just a totally different experience.  At least for me considering I have to drive 3-1/2 hour to the cities.  But remember, if you get greedy you will lose customers.  Divvy up the income any way you want to between the teams,  but make baseball available.  Please, please tell me why this is so difficult to figure out.  You have a product that people want to buy!!!  Sell it to them!!!  Make billions of dollars!!!  I don't see why that can't work out.

Agreed! They could market many different streaming packages. I swear they think that if someone pays $20 to $50 for a season pass that that customer will never go to the ballpark. They dont even make an attempt to sell to the casual fans. They could sell $1 or$2 single game streaming passes. Over the course of a season, that could end up making massive cash flow.  How MLB cant get out in front of this is mind boggling. 

[Heiny]

6 minutes ago, Fatbat said:

Agreed! They could market many different streaming packages. I swear they think that if someone pays $20 to $50 for a season pass that that customer will never go to the ballpark. They dont even make an attempt to sell to the casual fans. They could sell $1 or$2 single game streaming passes. Over the course of a season, that could end up making massive cash flow.  How MLB cant get out in front of this is mind boggling. 

I also think that getting more people to watch baseball on tv would increase interest in those people to head out to the games more often.

[Steve Lein]

16 hours ago, old nurse said:

$20 a month for a 7 month season is $140 500k subscribers would be a gross of 70 million.  How much ones it cost to produce a game? 55 people at 100K is 5.5 million   

Man, my brain missed a whole step! 🤣 

My 500K subscriber number was also, as I generously put it, "very optimistic." They probably never come close to hitting that number (there are like 2MIL "households" in Minnesota, and hitting 25% of them I think is a provably ridiculous estimate, I shouldn't have even said it, haha). The entirety of Bally Sports+ (admittedly, one of the worst services ever created) barely has 200K subscribers across the entire country, which means they probably have less than 10K in the state of MN for the Timberwolves and Wild. Are the Twins that much more popular than them to attract that level of audience? 

If we use the MLB.tv level model (which is about 4% of adults in the US), that turns that number into around 175K subscribers (probably lower because of the "die-hard fan" caveat being the ones who pay this pricing). Now they're getting like $25 MIL at $20/month. How much advertising money gets added to that pool? As you said, how much does it cost to produce a game?

A number like $55 MIL obviously isn't viable anymore. The available audience that can watch Twins games now, even if you add 175K subscribers to a streaming app, is about 1/3 of what it used to be not even 3 years ago, and will continue to go down as streaming continues to take more market share. Does that correlate directly to what their rights are worth? 

So what I'm still getting at, is I don't think whatever this number ends up as, is going to save the Twins spending potential. It's still going to lead to a lower payroll. I hope I am wrong, though!

Edited January 18, 2024 by Steve Lein

[Fatbat]

 Baseball is addicting… it should be sold like crack 🤣

[Steve Lein]

5 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

You are not accounting for advertising revenue.  The streaming fees are a relatively small portion of the value of broadcasting rights.  The broadcasting fee paid to a team is going to be a product of any streaming fees plus advertising revenue minus operating costs and profit.   

As for the fees, $120/year seems relatively modest.  That's quite a bit less than the average family spends to attend one game.  They could also sell packages that would not require fans to purchase rights to the entire season.

Yeah, I had a note about ad revenue in there, as I don't know what that number is. But it didn't make a $55 MIL fee to the Twins profitable.

I also understand the argument you are trying to make, but I don't think it's nearly as relevant in this discussion as it needs to be to make a difference. Not enough people care (see my other comment). I would love that type of "package" too, but it's never going to be a thing.

[August J Gloop]

6 minutes ago, Steve Lein said:

Yeah, I had a note about ad revenue in there, as I don't know what that number is. But it didn't make a $55 MIL fee to the Twins profitable.

I also understand the argument you are trying to make, but I don't think it's nearly as relevant in this discussion as it needs to be to make a difference. Not enough people care (see my other comment). I would love that type of "package" too, but it's never going to be a thing.

We also have to remember that ad revenue is a value add problem if we want to charge for the service. People don't really like ponying up to pay for a service to just have Shaq come on and hawk garbage car insurance with a cheap CGI character. It lowers the price they'd be willing to pay. Even to the point that they generally expect ad support to render the service free. 

[Steve Lein]

14 minutes ago, August J Gloop said:

We also have to remember that ad revenue is a value add problem if we want to charge for the service. People don't really like ponying up to pay for a service to just have Shaq come on and hawk garbage car insurance with a cheap CGI character. It lowers the price they'd be willing to pay. Even to the point that they generally expect ad support to render the service free. 

💯yup!

[Heiny]

26 minutes ago, Steve Lein said:

Man, my brain missed a whole step! 🤣 

My 500K subscriber number was also, as I generously put it, "very optimistic." They probably never come close to hitting that number (there are like 2MIL "households" in Minnesota, and hitting 25% of them I think is a provably ridiculous estimate, I shouldn't have even said it, haha). The entirety of Bally Sports+ (admittedly, one of the worst services ever created) barely has 200K subscribers across the entire country, which means they probably have less than 10K in the state of MN for the Timberwolves and Wild. Are the Twins that much more popular than them to attract that level of audience? 

If we use the MLB.tv level model (which is about 4% of adults in the US), that turns that number into around 175K subscribers (probably lower because of the "die-hard fan" caveat being the ones who pay this pricing). Now they're getting like $25 MIL at $20/month. How much advertising money gets added to that pool? As you said, how much does it cost to produce a game?

A number like $55 MIL obviously isn't viable anymore. The available audience that can watch Twins games now, even if you add 175K subscribers to a streaming app, is about 1/3 of what it used to be not even 3 years ago, and will continue to go down as streaming continues to take more market share. Does that correlate directly to what their rights are worth? 

So what I'm still getting at, is I don't think whatever this number ends up as, is going to save the Twins spending potential. It's still going to lead to a lower payroll. I hope I am wrong, though!

Where do you get your #s?  I'm not saying they're wrong, but that doesn't mean I believe them either.  This sounds like a lot of propaganda.  But I do know that "someone does know the #s" and what it would take to make a reasonable and profitable package.  And I believe that the dollars may sound excessive to some fans.  I am retired and on a fixed income, but I also know that I have many times in the past overpaid for a product that I wanted and passed on a product that I wanted due to excessive price. I'm also quite sure that there could be an acceptable margin of profit for an acceptable package price.  And it shouldn't be hard at all to find.

[Linus]

Forget about the numbers for a while. The system is broke. There aren’t enough people interested in baseball anymore to generate the amount of revenue previously generated. MLB was asleep at the switch while multiple generations stopped being interested in baseball. Those lost generations also happen to be the cord cutters - they are not going back and have no interest in paying anything more than a pittance to watch baseball. I’m an older guy who loves the game and pays an exorbitant sum to stream DirectTV so I can watch the Twins. This is not the norm anymore. Most teams are going to have to wrap their heads around the idea that their TV revenues are going to end up being half or less going forward. There is no realistic math that gets the Twins anywhere close to $50 million in TV revenue. 

[Steve Lein]

2 hours ago, Heiny said:

Where do you get your #s?  I'm not saying they're wrong, but that doesn't mean I believe them either.  This sounds like a lot of propaganda.  But I do know that "someone does know the #s" and what it would take to make a reasonable and profitable package.  And I believe that the dollars may sound excessive to some fans.  I am retired and on a fixed income, but I also know that I have many times in the past overpaid for a product that I wanted and passed on a product that I wanted due to excessive price. I'm also quite sure that there could be an acceptable margin of profit for an acceptable package price.  And it shouldn't be hard at all to find.

I can easily lookup subscriber numbers for MLB.tv, Bally Sports+, Netflix, etc... and the metrics they use about who they reach (MLB.tv's 4% number comes from here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/742188/mlbtv-subscription-adults-usa-by-age/) and can be used well enough to estimate the numbers I put in.

I also can easily find that BSN/FSN used to have around 3 MIL subscribers in one form or the other (cable/streaming/whatever else), and that it's now around 1.2 Million. And that most of those losses "came in the last 5 years" as of last March (https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2023/03/30/Media/bally-sports-north-subscriber-losses.aspx)

I also am with you about finding "someone [that] does know the #'s," instead of prognosticating in a propagandic fashion, hah. The intent isn't to be exact, but for sake of the discussion I went through this exercise to speculate because I am interested in what it could mean moving forward, and how this type of data correlates to the worth of the Twins TV rights (If I am drastically wrong I will still have learned something!).

And listen, I am a "die-hard" Twins fan. Heck, I write for an independent website about them!

BUT, for multiple years now, I have not been willing to pay this price to watch the Twins on TV. I subscribed to SlingTV for exactly 1 month this past year so I could watch their playoff games. As I, and now another commenter have pointed out, people in general don't want to pay these types of prices for the content provided. Netflix is literally the only thing in existence that gets away with it (and like 90% of their users don't get ads). I have absolutely adapted my viewing habits to get enough out of Twitter, MLB.com, ESPN, questionably legal gambling websites, etc... to watch the Twins. 

As a "die-hard" that is local as well, and works a 10-minute walk away from Target Field, I much rather would spend that money to attend a game, and multiple times over at that, to get those experiences over paying that for watching on TV. The ballpark pass has been a sweet deal in that regard!

I also can't recommend enough, MiLB.tv to people looking for a baseball fix. In comparison, the cost is 25% of MLB.tv ($35 vs $140) for a full season of games (and MLB.tv has the blackouts for the section of fans they need to reach), and absolutely any team/prospect I want to watch, not just one of them. I now watch more games via that than I ever did the Twins. The cost/benefit for my baseball and Twins interests has been astronomical for me as a "die-hard" with an especially interested focus on prospects and the minors. 😊

Edited January 18, 2024 by Steve Lein

[sun]

Right now, Diamond is being partially subsidized by Amazon which is a good thing for the 5 teams that Diamond owns the rights to. The Twins aren't locked into anything yet but if they decide to go along then the money they receive can be used this year. Diamond isn't responsible for all of the cord cutting that has reduced the revenues. But it could work out better in the future if Amazon continues to subsidize Diamond. After all Diamond has a lot of experience & there's some safety in the number of teams that sign with Diamond. No one is holding a gun to the Twins FO heads to force them to sign. It's about a new start & how much TV revenue do the Twins really need? According to the article below once the judge approves the deal MLB cannot stop it. 

Don't worry about the numbers, let the number crunchers worry about it. I don't want to watch all of MLB, I'm only interested in watching the Twins. Once the numbers start emerging then revenue can get better in the future. Bankruptcy is tough for business & Diamond wants to survive just like the Twins do. There's an old saying, "Go with the flow." Don't fight the current.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nhl/a-deal-to-save-diamond-sports-group-could-bring-wolves-wild-and-maybe-twins-to-amazon-prime/ar-AA1n8Ka0

[jharaldson]

I think the article undersells what the Twins could have done on their own this year:

Quote

While the Twins, MLB, or other local teams could potentially establish their own channel, Comcast was reluctant to charge subscribers for it, making it a very limited revenue source, relying only on advertising, a lot of which the Twins already enjoy with their broadcasts.

In 2004 the Twins were fighting with the cable companies over Victory Sports, it came out that FSN was getting $1.70 a subscriber but if they didn’t have baseball they would need to rebate the cable companies $.60 a subscriber to compensate for reduced content.  In 2023 the rate is now $3.07 a month and if the percentage stays at 35% like in 2004 or has risen up to 50% cable companies would have between $1-1.50 a subscriber to pay the Twins for a new channel and still be expense neutral.  1.25 per subscriber * 12 months * 1.2M cable households gets $18M off the top.  Add in the Twins made a statement in 2004 that they felt they could easily top the $40K a game FSN made in ad revenue which with inflation would be nearly $80-100K a game for $16M.  Add to that some amount of streaming revenue from households (20-40K * $100 a year = $2-4M) and you have $38M with room to grow.  Standing up a channel like this in 2024 and running would also prove to cable companies that it could be done and set the Twins up for signing the Wolves and Wild in 2025 and capturing the other $26M BSN is making on TV rights a year and making more ad and streaming revenue available.  

The biggest issue with the option above is a very passive leadership on the Twins that punted on this issue until 27 days before pitchers and catchers report and are now going to be hat in hand begging for whatever scraps they are offered instead of spending the time since April of 2023 getting a solution in place.

[old nurse]

6 hours ago, Steve Lein said:

Man, my brain missed a whole step! 🤣 

My 500K subscriber number was also, as I generously put it, "very optimistic." They probably never come close to hitting that number (there are like 2MIL "households" in Minnesota, and hitting 25% of them I think is a provably ridiculous estimate, I shouldn't have even said it, haha). The entirety of Bally Sports+ (admittedly, one of the worst services ever created) barely has 200K subscribers across the entire country, which means they probably have less than 10K in the state of MN for the Timberwolves and Wild. Are the Twins that much more popular than them to attract that level of audience? 

If we use the MLB.tv level model (which is about 4% of adults in the US), that turns that number into around 175K subscribers (probably lower because of the "die-hard fan" caveat being the ones who pay this pricing). Now they're getting like $25 MIL at $20/month. How much advertising money gets added to that pool? As you said, how much does it cost to produce a game?

A number like $55 MIL obviously isn't viable anymore. The available audience that can watch Twins games now, even if you add 175K subscribers to a streaming app, is about 1/3 of what it used to be not even 3 years ago, and will continue to go down as streaming continues to take more market share. Does that correlate directly to what their rights are worth? 

So what I'm still getting at, is I don't think whatever this number ends up as, is going to save the Twins spending potential. It's still going to lead to a lower payroll. I hope I am wrong, though!

Amazon has 173 million prime members  People would likely have to sign up for Amazon Prime first. They start shopping, Amazon makes money 

[Steve Lein]

1 hour ago, old nurse said:

Amazon has 173 million prime members  People would likely have to sign up for Amazon Prime first. They start shopping, Amazon makes money 

You're not getting these games/coverage with just your Amazon Prime subscription. It will be a separate add-on, just like a Regional Sports Network.

[David HK]

As a boomer-era relic, this is entirely confusing for me.  I saw this on Espn this morning (HK time), and still didn't understand what it all meant-  this was the telling paragraph in their report:

Espn report- amazon deal

"What about MLB in 2024 and beyond?

An attorney for Diamond asserted in bankruptcy court that the company will broadcast all the games and honor all the rights fees for nine of the teams in its portfolio: the Tigers, Marlins, Royals, Brewers, Rays, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds, Los Angeles Angels and Atlanta Braves. There are three others, the attorney said, in talks about restructured contracts. The names weren't disclosed, but those three, according to sources, are the Texas Rangers, Cleveland Guardians and Minnesota Twins (the Twins are essentially a free agent; their contract with Diamond expired at the end of the 2023 season)."

I still don't know what it all means for the Twins.  All I do know is, I've had mlb.tv for many years, and  I'm pissed off when they decide to broadcast on Apple and I can't watch what I've already paid for.

[Joey Self]

8 hours ago, Steve Lein said:

 

I also can't recommend enough, MiLB.tv to people looking for a baseball fix. In comparison, the cost is 25% of MLB.tv ($35 vs $140) for a full season of games (and MLB.tv has the blackouts for the section of fans they need to reach), and absolutely any team/prospect I want to watch, not just one of them. I now watch more games via that than I ever did the Twins. The cost/benefit for my baseball and Twins interests has been astronomical for me as a "die-hard" with an especially interested focus on prospects and the minors. 😊

Last year, I had minor league games as part of my MLB package--or maybe I paid for it and didn't realize it.  It gets charged to the credit card, the wife asks "You DO want the baseball package again this year?"  and pays it.  I don't know what it cost! :)

JcS

[Joey Self]

1 hour ago, David HK said:

As a boomer-era relic, this is entirely confusing for me.  I saw this on Espn this morning (HK time), and still didn't understand what it all meant-  this was the telling paragraph in their report:

Espn report- amazon deal

 

I still don't know what it all means for the Twins.  All I do know is, I've had mlb.tv for many years, and  I'm pissed off when they decide to broadcast on Apple and I can't watch what I've already paid for.

Yep.  I just avoid the score (most of the time) and watch the game the next day on MLB.  

Or at least, I think I did.  Maybe I never saw those Apple games, or maybe I saw them on a simulator site.  

JcS

[ashbury]

13 hours ago, Johnny Ringo said:

I used to deal with bankruptcies professionally. 

Now I know how a doctor must feel when they watch Grey's Anatomy.  

Holy smokes. But it means we are getting Jordan Montgomery, right?

I'm amazed you don't save this good stuff for the Patreon feed. 

Care to correct some misinformation with facts?

[nicksaviking]

2 hours ago, Steve Lein said:

You're not getting these games/coverage with just your Amazon Prime subscription. It will be a separate add-on, just like a Regional Sports Network.

I haven't seen that stated anywhere, do you have an article confirming this? That wouldn't seem to make sense for Amazon as they likely wouldn't want to put more roadblocks than necessary, they are almost certainly in this just to gain a bigger audience.

[Steve Lein]

12 hours ago, nicksaviking said:

I haven't seen that stated anywhere, do you have an article confirming this? That wouldn't seem to make sense for Amazon as they likely wouldn't want to put more roadblocks than necessary, they are almost certainly in this just to gain a bigger audience.

There literally is nowhere, Amazon or other, that offers regional sports coverage without additional fees. In cable and Live streaming services, you have to pick the package with them (and it's always the most expensive one). 

National games, absolutely this would be and is a thing (see NFL). But doing that for specific teams, and basically every game on their schedule, is a whole other animal.

This would be a much bigger story if you were going to get this with only your Prime subscription. (I will absolutely eat crow if my impression is wrong, as this would be an amazing development, IMO. I just don't see how they would accept those costs. They're not going to gain a significant amount of subscribers for this, when those subscribers basically already exist)

I'm thinking of it this way: My prime subscription is $140/year. Your RSN service costs $240/year (and they'd essentially be adding 5 of them if the Twins sign on to something). I don't see how even Amazon can absorb whatever portion of those costs they'd be incurring without charging something for it. 

Edited January 19, 2024 by Steve Lein

[old nurse]

14 hours ago, Steve Lein said:

You're not getting these games/coverage with just your Amazon Prime subscription. It will be a separate add-on, just like a Regional Sports Network.

Like Amazon Video, amazon baseball would be an addition charge, but it could make for more prime members, more shopping since you paid for it 

[August J Gloop]

20 minutes ago, Steve Lein said:

There literally is nowhere, Amazon or other, that offers regional sports coverage without additional fees. In cable and Live streaming services, you have to pick the package with them (and it's always the most expensive one). 

National games, absolutely this would be and is a thing (see NFL). But doing that for specific teams, and basically every game on their schedule, is a whole other animal.

This would be a much bigger story if you were going to get this with only your Prime subscription. (I will absolutely eat crow if my impression of this is wrong, as this would be an amazing development, IMO)

I think the problem we're really running into on this is that there is no useful info. So all we can do is go on what has been done. AMZN would be smart to disregard the past and just offer all the games of the teams they have rights to to anyone with a prime account. They could sneak the price in to an increase and basically nobody would notice. 

It's hard for us who don't hold AMZN in high regard to imagine a future where they tear RSNs down and replace them with something actually consumer friendly. 

Imagine a sports sub where all the leagues of the world are easily searched and indexed. Scores can be hidden. Streams are up to 8K HDR. You can follow your favorite teams and players. All built on the great work of the MLB.TV app. I get misty. 

But nope. It'll be $15 bucks a month and you'll have to select your home market, and will only be able to do that once a year.

[nicksaviking]

25 minutes ago, Steve Lein said:

There literally is nowhere, Amazon or other, that offers regional sports coverage without additional fees. In cable and Live streaming services, you have to pick the package with them (and it's always the most expensive one). 

National games, absolutely this would be and is a thing (see NFL). But doing that for specific teams, and basically every game on their schedule, is a whole other animal.

This would be a much bigger story if you were going to get this with only your Prime subscription. (I will absolutely eat crow if my impression is wrong, as this would be an amazing development, IMO. I just don't see how they would accept those costs. They're not going to gain a significant amount of subscribers for this, when those subscribers basically already exist)

I'm thinking of it this way: My prime subscription is $140/year. Your RSN service costs $240/year (and they'd essentially be adding 5 of them if the Twins sign on to something). I don't see how even Amazon can absorb whatever portion of those costs they'd be incurring without charging something for it. 

What costs? Diamond already has the infrastructure in place and Amazon is now just investing in Diamond. If everyone in the country already had Amazon Prime, then adding another tier of service would make sense, but most people still don't, adding baseball to their offerings will increase their subscribers.

These streaming giants are making movies that cost 200M to produce. They don't charge extra for those movies, and that's almost certainly more than it costs to produce a season's worth of baseball games. And even if their new 200M Brad Pitt movie gets them some new subscribers, it likely wouldn't get as many as adding baseball games, additionally tons of people would only sign up for the month and drop it after they've seen the Brad Pitt movie. Adding baseball gets them adding subscribers for six months.

[Steve Lein]

23 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

What costs? Diamond already has the infrastructure in place and Amazon is now just investing in Diamond. If everyone in the country already had Amazon Prime, then adding another tier of service would make sense, but most people still don't, adding baseball to their offerings will increase their subscribers.

These streaming giants are making movies that cost 200M to produce. They don't charge extra for those movies, and that's almost certainly more than it costs to produce a season's worth of baseball games. And even if their new 200M Brad Pitt movie gets them some new subscribers, it likely wouldn't get as many as adding baseball games, additionally tons of people would only sign up for the month and drop it after they've seen the Brad Pitt movie. Adding baseball gets them adding subscribers for six months.

Amazon already has over like 170 million Prime subscribers. I understand they will absolutely gain some, but what even is the percentage they could at this point? They doubled their numbers every 2 years from 2013 to 2017, but haven't doubled it again since then because that type of growth isn't possible anymore. They have very little overhead left that they could even add.

Amazon is absolutely taking on costs doing this. This deal gives them a "minority stake" ownership. In simple terms, whatever that % is, is the cost they'll undertake. Say it's 10%, that means $24 of that $240 RSN cost becomes their responsibility. Multiply that by 5 for starters, and it's $100 extra dollars/year in costs they're taking on. Does it make Amazon unprofitable? No. But it definitely eats into their margins, and a lot of people care about things like that (investors/stakeholders most specifically).

Also, this article outlines that there will be additional subscription fees to see these games, Prime TV is just the platform they will be available on: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2024/01/17/bally-sports-coming-to-amazon-prime-video-in-proposed-deal-what-to-know/?sh=2047db277d30

Edited January 19, 2024 by Steve Lein