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

On Tuesday afternoon, the Twins announced that they will be leaving the Diamond Sports Group and have their game broadcasts produced and distributed by MLB itself. In addition to the Padres, Rockies, and Diamondbacks, who played the entire 2024 season under this arrangement, the Twins will be in the same boat as Upper Midwest neighbors the Brewers and the division rival Guardians. The new right allocation will include the ability to stream games within the Twin Cities market, without blackouts, on a direct subscriber model.

The announcement is the Twins' first truly fan-friendly move regarding television and streaming rights in several years—not that it’s a terribly high bar to clear. Let's review:

Direct-to-consumer streaming options have not been available for Twins games for any in-market games for several years, as the Twins bargained them away in the TV rights agreement that the Twins had with Diamond Sports/Bally Sports North.

Then, about this time last year, Twins fans were told that since Diamond Sports/Bally Sports North would no longer be paying the Twins for TV rights (later revealed to be worth $54M/year), the Twins player payroll would be slashed. However, at least Twins fans could expect to have games on TV and streaming without in-market blackouts for the 2025 season.

Except then, the Twins re-signed for one year with Diamond Sports/Bally Sports North for a portion of their previous agreement. However, none of that money went to the slashed Twins player payroll. Instead, the Twins announced they needed to “right-size” their spending. Plus, no streaming options and in-market blackouts existed since the old agreement was again back in place. 

The (rancid) icing on the (disgusting) cake came on May 1st, when Diamond Sports and Comcast announced that they could not agree for Bally regional sports channels to remain on Comcast. As a result, from May 1st through July 31st, the biggest cable carrier in Minnesota could not televise Twins games to Twins fans, who also could not stream games because of the Twins’ TV rights agreement with Diamond Sports.

Today’s announcement could be viewed as all parties involved finally agreeing that it was time to rip off the bandage if one hadn’t watched it being slowly and painfully pulled for the last several years. To be fair to the parties involved, they all previously had a pretty sweet deal, including Twins fans, as the TV revenues were largely being carried by cable subscribers who had no interest in baseball.

Previously, because Bally’s Sports North (BSN) was part of the basic cable package, they charged Comcast for every cable subscriber they had, whether the subscriber wanted to watch sports or not. That’s how it works for every basic cable channel, but not every channel charges the estimated $8-10 per month that BSN demands. For instance, if a million local cable subscribers are paying $8/month for 12 months per year, that’s $96M in gross revenues per year. One can quickly get to the point where a $54M annual TV-rights contract makes sense. 

However, as part of the new agreement that got BSN back on Comcast, BSN is now a tiered channel, meaning subscribers need to opt into it for something like $20/month. That changes the business model significantly. For instance, in the example above, BSN would need to get 400,000 of Comcast’s million subscribers to opt in to get the same revenue. The actual number of households that will pay an extra $20/month for sports is likely a fraction of that. 

The same goes for streaming. While it’s the future, it suffers from the same problem that BSN faces with Comcast—it only bills those who opt in. That’s why the Twins kept sacrificing it as an option to sign their much more lucrative TV deal with Diamond Sports. 

The new deal means the middleman is gone, at least for now. Twins fans can watch their team via TV or the internet by paying MLB (essentially) directly, whether they are cutting the cord or not. The new deal also recognizes that those lucrative TV rights days are likely gone forever for baseball teams and regional sports networks. Moving to MLB Media’s platform means the Twins are trading the past’s significant revenues for the present’s ability to meet their fan base wherever their fan base wants. So long as they opt in.

That decision would have been much more admirable if the past’s significant revenues had remained an option. And had the Twins not been dragged to that realization over the last year, kicking and screaming.