Twins Leaving Bally Sports North: New TV Partner Will Be MLB Itself, Blackouts Are Gone

[LastOnePicked]

They had to know this shift was coming. Wouldn't it have made sense to keep fan momentum building in 2024, so that you can sign up 35K subscribers before opening day 2025, instead of the 8-10K they'll likely get after this season's debacle.

I like the potential pricing being mentioned here, but not to watch this Twins team. Give me a feisty, fast and fundamentally sound team, sure. Not these Twins.

[Western SD Fan]

As a subscriber who had both Rockies and Twins for years, the Rockies stayed on all cable and satellite channels this year even with the possibility of streaming through MLB.TV.  I also see now that they are finally agreeing to streaming in-market, they moved me to out of market. Oh, the $1.000's of dollars I could have saved if they did this years ago. 🙂

[Fatbat]

15 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

This is what MLB wanted before Bally outbid them...

Because the $$$$ talked and ownership didn’t care if their product was ever delivered to the fans.  Ownership is to blame for its own decisions to take revenue from people that rarely or never turned on bsn. Chasing revenue and ignoring your customers is a great business plan 🤦‍♂️

[DJL44]

7 hours ago, LastOnePicked said:

I like the potential pricing being mentioned here, but not to watch this Twins team. Give me a feisty, fast and fundamentally sound team, sure. Not these Twins.

The pricing is 62 cents a game, cancel any time.

[JD-TWINS]

17 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

It's the only move they had, give them credit for not dragging their feet.  I would like to see them find a local channel as well.

This also cements their media revenue as "paltry" going forward, just so there are no illusions about the ramifications of this correct decision.

Is it realistic to have a local channel as well? Am curious. The local channel wouldn’t have to pay much w/o any market protection & I assume MLB wants $$ from streaming platforms? I like the flexibility this other alternative would bring but having a competitive broadcast doesn’t seem to be able to be pulled off - to me. Hope so!

[Trov]

18 hours ago, Vanimal46 said:

It’s a good decision. Make it ridiculously easy to stumble upon the games. This should help bringing back apathetic fans and attract new eyes to the team. 

This depends.  MLB says they will be looking for local carriers and cable, but depending on how that goes they may not get apathetic fans back.  The only way you get that is if you get a channel on basic cable packages, or on local network TV.  If not, then fans need to pay the streaming price of $99 a year, or pay for the bigger cable package.  That is not going to attract the apathetic fan again. 

[Trov]

7 minutes ago, JD-TWINS said:

Is it realistic to have a local channel as well? Am curious. The local channel wouldn’t have to pay much w/o any market protection & I assume MLB wants $$ from streaming platforms? I like the flexibility this other alternative would bring but having a competitive broadcast doesn’t seem to be able to be pulled off - to me. Hope so!

MLB says they are going to try to find local channels.  It may be on MLB tv for cable, they have been showing regional rights this past year.  It could also mean like weekend games on 29, 23, or 45 for twin cities channels.  They would be unlikely to get any of the other channels because the of national things they need to air. 

[nicksaviking]

13 hours ago, Jocko87 said:

 

I live out of market so have been on the regular MLB app for years.  When I go to my hometown in North Dakota, all traces of the Twins are gone.  Blacked out 650 miles from the stadium and satellite being the only way to get an appropriate station for many years.  Lots of actual new reach which the Padres didn't really have.  I'll buy whatever the add on costs as I travel in the region enough to use it.

 

Yeah, the coastal cities and media moguls don't understand the Midwest. Blacking out games in the middle of the Dakotas is like New York blacking out everything East of Cleveland.

[LastOnePicked]

3 hours ago, DJL44 said:

The pricing is 62 cents a game, cancel any time.

That's about 50 cents too much. And I would hope I can quit any time - the team certainly did.

Some of this is just sour griping. I've wanted to stream the Twins like this for years. I just really hope they'll be worth watching.

[Jocko87]

27 minutes ago, LastOnePicked said:

That's about 50 cents too much. And I would hope I can quit any time - the team certainly did.

Some of this is just sour griping. I've wanted to stream the Twins like this for years. I just really hope they'll be worth watching.

I'll try to remember to check back next year at this time to find out which month you signed up.

[TheLeviathan]

1 hour ago, JD-TWINS said:

Is it realistic to have a local channel as well? Am curious. The local channel wouldn’t have to pay much w/o any market protection & I assume MLB wants $$ from streaming platforms? I like the flexibility this other alternative would bring but having a competitive broadcast doesn’t seem to be able to be pulled off - to me. Hope so!

I cut cable/local a long time ago so I don't have personal experience, but I know the Phoenix Suns have resorted to that for basketball.  I'm just not sure how that works with broadcasting deals.  MLB is not notoriously flexible on this sort of thing.

[LastOnePicked]

23 minutes ago, Jocko87 said:

I'll try to remember to check back next year at this time to find out which month you signed up.

I'm an idiot, so it will probably be April.

[IaBeanCounter]

To me the 40k subscribers seems very low for the Twins "red" area.  Think how may bars are in this area, a substantial percentage of which will sign up for the MLB full package.  Also how many die hard fans are in this area, they will sign up.  How many fans, like me, were in the blackout area so getting MLB made no sense.  I cut the cable cord a couple of years ago, so the only games I got to watch were national games and Chi WS games (included in my You Tube TV package).

 

[lake_guy]

19 hours ago, DJL44 said:

50% of broadcast revenue is shared.

It's a huge win for baseball fans. Instead of $1000/year it's $100/year to watch the team. It will take a few years for the free agent market to adjust but the best players will still make tens of millions.

More specifically I think it's a huge win for fans of clubs outside of the big markets.  I know this won't sit well with many on this site but I'm hoping this all leads to an epic crisis in MLB that makes them get to full revenue sharing along with floor and capped payroll or at the very least heavily taxed upper tiers.  MLB owners need to treat this like a league.

The impacts are only starting for the clubs and players.  I suspect salaries are gonna get heavily impacted, how could it not when something like 20% of the teams aren't going to engage b/c they have maybe 30-50% of the revenue they once had?  Gonna be interesting to watch what happens with expansion plans.

[Jocko87]

1 hour ago, IaBeanCounter said:

To me the 40k subscribers seems very low for the Twins "red" area.  Think how may bars are in this area, a substantial percentage of which will sign up for the MLB full package.  Also how many die hard fans are in this area, they will sign up.  How many fans, like me, were in the blackout area so getting MLB made no sense.  I cut the cable cord a couple of years ago, so the only games I got to watch were national games and Chi WS games (included in my You Tube TV package).

 

Those one-tap bars might be key to unlocking a lot of those areas. 

I lived in central Illinois when YouTubeTV was getting going.  I was an early adopter being very sick of DirecTV.  Then Comcast or someone had a dispute with rights and suddenly the Cards and Bears weren't on TV anymore.  I would just put it on my phone at the bar after golf league and probably signed up 30 folks for YoutubeTV just from people gasping "how are you watching that?"

If I were the Twins, I'd put about 5 interns on the road all winter, just going to these bars and giving the first year free.  Gotta hang a few signs but you can have 150+ games free.  First, people come to the bar to watch or notice its on a few times then they realize its just 100 bucks.  So many households had no option in the past.  Get the word out.

[Heiny]

So please correct me if I'm wrong but, If I subscribe to Twins.tv I get just Twins games for $99 a year. I can handle that.  But if I sign up for MLB.tv I get all mlb games being broadcast including the Twins with no blackouts, plus MiLB.tv with no blackouts for $139 per year.  This would be my choice if this is correct.  Anybody know if this is correct?

[Mike Sixel]

1 minute ago, Heiny said:

So please correct me if I'm wrong but, If I subscribe to Twins.tv I get just Twins games for $99 a year. I can handle that.  But if I sign up for MLB.tv I get all mlb games being broadcast including the Twins with no blackouts, plus MiLB.tv with no blackouts for $139 per year.  This would be my choice if this is correct.  Anybody know if this is correct?

We don't know yet, but that's likely approximately true. 

[Heiny]

8 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

We don't know yet, but that's likely approximately true. 

Thanks, I would be all over the MLB.tv package if this were the case even though my cable bill will not be reduced.  But at this point, I pay over $200/month for my cable plus internet which will be kept.  So adding "approximately $139/year which comes to about $11.50/month for all the baseball I can digest(which is alot) would be a great deal for me.  I am retired with health issues, so I watch alot of tv.

[Otto von Ballpark]

49 minutes ago, Heiny said:

So please correct me if I'm wrong but, If I subscribe to Twins.tv I get just Twins games for $99 a year. I can handle that.  But if I sign up for MLB.tv I get all mlb games being broadcast including the Twins with no blackouts, plus MiLB.tv with no blackouts for $139 per year.  This would be my choice if this is correct.  Anybody know if this is correct?

Not quite. The existing "all teams" out-of-market MLBTV package is staying the same, meaning it would still black out the Twins locally.

If you want to stream all MLB games (with the exception of national broadcasts, of course), you'll need both the new Twins.TV package and the existing all teams MLBTV package. You can subscribe to both using the same MLB.com account. I think the Padres and others offered them as a combo for ~$200 last year, or better yet, you can pick up the MLBTV package cheap/free during the T-Mobile promotion the first week of the season. Then the only notable cost would be the ~$100 Twins.TV subscription.

[Otto von Ballpark]

22 hours ago, thelanges5 said:

Thanks for sharing that image. It looks like MLB will be adjusting the Twins blackout market boundaries. As others have said, if you are outside this red area, you should now be able to stream the Twins with the regular ol' out-of-market MLBTV All Teams package.

Below is a map of the previous boundaries -- it appears the Twins traded western SD and most of IA to claim more of western Wisconsin. I was surprised to see the Brewers had some blackout territory in Minnesota -- will be interesting to see if they keep that territory with their new Brewers.TV streaming package.

[Steve Lein]

19 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

The Padres drew 40K.  The Twins would be thrilled to even marginally beat that.

They aren't pulling 200k.

I don't think the Padres are a perfect comparison. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but the Padres did not have the issue of not having a broadcast/cable/satellite/etc... provider that wouldn't have them, because when MLB took them over they kept them intact. 

So the headroom in their market to add subscribers is/was not the same as what it is going to be here, from my understanding. If they hit 4% of households in just the metro area (which is the consensus for amount of people who subscribe to MLB streaming, across all age groups), that's 60K subscribers. If they hit 4% of all households in Minnesota, that's 90K subscribers. Add in their range shown in the graphic that's been shared with the announcement, and you start approaching 150K subscribers at 4% of households. I don't actually believe it will be that many, but I also think 100K+ isn't out of the question eventually.

If we do use the Padres subscriber count as a baseline, they got 40K subs out of 2.13 Million households they added reach to, or about 2% give or take. The Twins are expanding their reach to 3.32 Million more households, so that 2% would give them 60K. 

Now, neither of these predictions is going to be anything close to revenues they were getting with the sweetheart TV deals of years past, but saying they won't get even 40K subscribers I think is misunderstanding what's been the overall issue, which is availability, here in our market.

[TheLeviathan]

7 minutes ago, Steve Lein said:

I don't think the Padres are a perfect comparison. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but the Padres did not have the issue of not having a broadcast/cable/satellite/etc... provider that wouldn't have them, because when MLB took them over they kept them intact. 

So the headroom in their market to add subscribers is/was not the same as what it is going to be here, from my understanding. If they hit 4% of households in just the metro area (which is the consensus for amount of people who subscribe to MLB streaming, across all age groups), that's 60K subscribers. If they hit 4% of all households in Minnesota, that's 90K subscribers. Add in their range shown in the graphic that's been shared with the announcement, and you start approaching 150K subscribers at 4% of households. I don't actually believe it will be that many, but I also think 100K+ isn't out of the question eventually.

If we do use the Padres subscriber count as a baseline, they got 40K subs out of 2.13 Million households they added reach to, or about 2% give or take. The Twins are expanding their reach to 3.32 Million more households, so that 2% would give them 60K. 

Now, neither of these predictions is going to be anything close to revenues they were getting with the sweetheart TV deals of years past, but saying they won't get even 40K subscribers I think is misunderstanding what's been the overall issue, which is availability, here in our market.

Padres only had Padres.TV and national games.  They did what the Twins are doing now.

They, by the way, are the biggest success.  We don't know the Arizona or Colorado subscriber counts but it was likely far less than 40k because no one has dared report what the actual number is.  

Also, the Rockies could make similar geographic arguments and household reach.  Probably moreso than the Twins given the larger populations they expand out to in their region.  It's quite possible the Rockies didn't even clear 10k.

Availability is great, but casual fans aren't going to pony up $20 a month when there are alternatives that cost zero.  Not to the tune of 60k at least.  You'll get your diehards and that will probaby be it.  

[Steve Lein]

8 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

Padres only had Padres.TV and national games.  They did what the Twins are doing now.

 

https://thesandiegosun.com/san-diego-padres-games-will-indeed-air-on-cable-tv-in-2024/ -> I think you are wrong on this part, but either way it's not going to change much when it comes to revenue for the team whether it's 20K or 100K, we can agree on that.

[TheLeviathan]

2 minutes ago, Steve Lein said:

https://thesandiegosun.com/san-diego-padres-games-will-indeed-air-on-cable-tv-in-2024/ -> I think you are wrong on this part, but either way it's not going to change much when it comes to revenue for the team whether it's 20K or 100K, we can agree on that.

Good find, thank you! That does help the argument some, but I would still argue we're talking about one of baseball's most rabid fan bases.  This move (which I've said is the right one) might build subscribers over time but I think it's going to be really ugly early on.  

I hope I'm wrong.

[Otto von Ballpark]

21 hours ago, Vanimal46 said:

They would hit the trifecta if they negotiated a deal with an over the air channel to broadcast a game every week so new eyes can come across the content. 

 

20 hours ago, howeda7 said:

They 100% need to do this. Their Sunday games on Channel 29 back 2000-2010 used to put up some big #'s. And it won't effect the # who sign up for streaming much if at all.

I'm a big proponent of OTA, but I'm not sure if the team will (or should?) give it much priority.

I found some Nielsen data from late 2023, and if I'm reading it correctly, this is a household TV viewership breakdown of the Minneapolis "Designated Market Area" (DMA):

Primarily watch cable/satellite: 49%
Primarily watch OTA: 23%
No OTA or cable/satellite: 29%
Subscribes to a streaming TV provider (like YouTube TV, Fubo, etc.): 18%

(It appears the Nielsen "Designated Market Area" for Minneapolis is ~4.2 million people, so a little beyond the MSP metro area?)

And while cable/satellite is obviously declining, I don't think that's translating to big gains for OTA.

Judging by that, the top priority for the team is still getting carriage on cable/satellite. That's not necessarily mutually exclusive with OTA carriage, but it may also be a lot simpler to get carriage on cable/satellite and even streaming, because those providers can simply create a new channel for you out of thin air. You can't do that OTA, where frequencies are limited and already claimed -- the Twins/MLB would need to find a specific local broadcaster who is willing to deal. The recently launched ATSC 3.0 standard makes things even more complicated, because a bunch of OTA networks are duplicated across two frequencies right now, meaning even less flexibility than the last time the Twins were available OTA.

[Otto von Ballpark]

For local OTA partners, 5.2 (45TV), 9.2 (FOX9+), and 23.1 (The CW) would be the logical targets. They don't have any (important) network content to pre-empt.

Minnesota United FC (Loons) soccer began with OTA on channel 9.2 in 2017, then moved to Bally in 2018, then added some Bally simulcasts on 23.1 in 2021, before going to streaming exclusively in 2023. On a rare occasion a few years ago, with the Twins, Wolves, and Wild all active on the same night, Bally did a simulcast of one of them on 23.1.

41.1 (ION) added some WNBA games the past two seasons, but that channel is barely OTA in the Twin Cities -- it's broadcast from an entirely different location than all the major networks, and with suspect power. It's primarily a cable/streaming channel here.

[howeda7]

3 hours ago, Otto von Ballpark said:

 

I'm a big proponent of OTA, but I'm not sure if the team will (or should?) give it much priority.

I found some Nielsen data from late 2023, and if I'm reading it correctly, this is a household TV viewership breakdown of the Minneapolis "Designated Market Area" (DMA):

Primarily watch cable/satellite: 49%
Primarily watch OTA: 23%
No OTA or cable/satellite: 29%
Subscribes to a streaming TV provider (like YouTube TV, Fubo, etc.): 18%

(It appears the Nielsen "Designated Market Area" for Minneapolis is ~4.2 million people, so a little beyond the MSP metro area?)

And while cable/satellite is obviously declining, I don't think that's translating to big gains for OTA.

Judging by that, the top priority for the team is still getting carriage on cable/satellite. That's not necessarily mutually exclusive with OTA carriage, but it may also be a lot simpler to get carriage on cable/satellite and even streaming, because those providers can simply create a new channel for you out of thin air. You can't do that OTA, where frequencies are limited and already claimed -- the Twins/MLB would need to find a specific local broadcaster who is willing to deal. The recently launched ATSC 3.0 standard makes things even more complicated, because a bunch of OTA networks are duplicated across two frequencies right now, meaning even less flexibility than the last time the Twins were available OTA.

I'm assuming that the channel they would sell Sunday games to would already be available on most cable/satellite packages (Chanel 45, 29 etc.). Also, they would still be able to stream/offer the games on the designated cable/satellite channel for the markets outside of MSP (Sioux Falls, Fargo, Duluth) etc. This is the same as it was years ago. I don't see having one game/week OTA impacting the # of subscriptions they sell or having a big impact on how much DirecTV/Comcast etc. would pay them for the streaming channel.

[howeda7]

11 hours ago, Fatbat said:

Because the $$$$ talked and ownership didn’t care if their product was ever delivered to the fans.  Ownership is to blame for its own decisions to take revenue from people that rarely or never turned on bsn. Chasing revenue and ignoring your customers is a great business plan 🤦‍♂️

Allegedly, the Twins were ready/willing to do this last year, but MLB was not ready to do production for so many teams and told them to take the Bally's $$ for one more year.

[Need4speed99]

This is getting to be a joke. All these teams now doing their own streaming and charging way more than they should. So to watch my mn sports (vikes, wild, twins, wolves) I will need 4 different providers. It's getting to the point that to be able to watch all 4 I'm going to be spending a 50 to 100 bucks a month. All while these athletes get paid crazier and crazier salaries and billionaire owners get 75% of their stadiums funded by taxpayers and rake in million more. Sports are becoming a joke.

[Jocko87]

5 hours ago, Steve Lein said:

https://thesandiegosun.com/san-diego-padres-games-will-indeed-air-on-cable-tv-in-2024/ -> I think you are wrong on this part, but either way it's not going to change much when it comes to revenue for the team whether it's 20K or 100K, we can agree on that.

Everything I can find says the Padres didn't really have a service disruption when Bally's spit the bit. Their 40k feels like mostly luxury subscribers as it was still available on cable.  If so, that would bode well for a market that's struggling with basic availability.  It doesn't seem like a real comp.

I think an underrated part of this whole thing is it's on my phone now rather than tied to a TV.  Many subscribers available just for that convenience.