Jump to content
Twins Daily
  • Create Account

Otto von Ballpark

Old-Timey Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    20,669

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    74

 Content Type 

Profiles

News

Minnesota Twins Videos

2026 Minnesota Twins Top Prospects Ranking

2022 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

Minnesota Twins Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits

Guides & Resources

2023 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

The Minnesota Twins Players Project

2024 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

2025 Minnesota Twins Draft Pick Tracker

2026 Minnesota Twins Draft Tracker: Picks & Bonuses

Forums

Blogs

Events

Store

Downloads

Gallery

Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    The speculated Twins.TV pricing is now official: $20 per month, or $100 for the season.
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    Got it. Yes, that is true. You can bundle both packages for $200 for the season, if you need it. Or just add one for a month as needed. I recommend all baseball fans pick up a MLBTV subscription during the T-Mobile opening week promotion. Free if you or someone you know has T-Mobile, or ~$10 to pick one up from a T-Mobile customer in the Slickdeals forum.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    MLB.TV will not be necessary to watch the Twins games locally. You'll only need the Twins.TV package. You can optionally add/bundle that with MLB.TV if you want to watch non-Twins games too.
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    This from the article is incorrect. Out-of-market fans just needed MLBTV like before, no Padres.TV (or Twins.TV) necessary.
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    Last summer, the commissioner said the Padres had 40,000 subscribers to their streaming package, and that was the highest of the MLB-broadcast teams at that time (San Diego, Arizona, and Colorado). Even assuming those are all full-season subscribers: 40,000 * $100 = $4 million The team likely earned a bit from their cable and satellite partners too, but -- that's not much money in the pro sports world! By comparison, the Twins earned $53 million from Bally in 2023, and reportedly around 80% of that (~$42 mil) in 2024. Edit to add: good analysis from a few months back: https://twinsdaily.com/news-rumors/minnesota-twins/will-twinstv-save-the-twins-a-look-at-the-financial-future-r17197/
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    I too am not optimistic about subscriber numbers, but I don't think the $20 monthly price will be much of a factor. By now, most consumers see sports as a different product -- they know that Netflix/Hulu/Amazon don't really have sports (many even deliberately choose them to avoid paying for sports). I just don't know how many subscribers are reachable in this market right now, regardless of pricing. It's not a big market to begin with. Many have already cut the cord and become accustomed to life without the Twins on their TV. Many just aren't excited about the current product on the field, and/or the disinvestment by ownership. And many casuals likely can't be reached by anything but bundling (which is why Twins.TV placement on cable/satellite is still important).
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    The issue is that the T-Mobile redemption period doesn't start until the opening week of the season. Although last season's MLBTV subscriptions (including the T-Mobile ones) are usually active until March 1st, so you can sometimes catch a few early spring games. And there is usually a "free game of the day" available to anyone with a MLB.com account regardless of subscription status. And last year, they had a "free preview" from March 22-26 where every game was marked as a free game. And of course, blackouts aren't typically enforced during spring training. You could also just subscribe to MLBTV for a month (~$30?) to get those other spring games. If you are local and if Twins.TV is available by then, maybe you can do that for $20 for the month of March, or perhaps March will be included in the $100 season price.
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    Any device -- it's just like a regular MLBTV subscription. The only difference is that the T-Mobile promotion terms technically say you shouldn't use it over a non-T-Mobile wireless carrier, although I don't know if they have enforced that recently. But home/wifi use is fine.
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    In addition to casting, another easy solution is adding a streaming stick to your TV. That will let you install the MLB app, just like you would on a supported smart TV. I've used the Amazon Fire Stick 4K, if you can find it on sale. I've heard good things about the Onn 4K Streaming Box for ~$20 from Walmart.
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    If that is currently the case, I suspect it will not change. YES Network, for example, doesn't own the rights to broadcast Twins games in the Twins media market, even if they are playing the Yankees.
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    The regular MLBTV package (the free T-Mobile one) will still have local blackouts, both home and away games. You will need the new Twins.TV package to stream the local Twins broadcasts if you are located in MN, SD, ND, IA (not sure if all?), and western WI. You won't actually need the regular MLBTV package unless you want to watch non-Twins games, or you want to stream the Twins while you are traveling beyond MN, SD, ND, IA, and WI. But of course, if it's free from T-Mobile, you might as well get it! You can combine both the MLBTV and Twins.TV packages on the same MLB.com account.
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    According to Fangraphs, Gasper’s 18 career at-bats without a hit is the most in Boston franchise history. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/sunday-notes-for-detroits-justyn-henry-malloy-change-is-a-scary-place/
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    Gasper had great hitting numbers in his AAA debut in 2024 — at age 28. Primarily a first baseman, but has played some catcher in the minors and a few games at second base too. Went 0-for-18 in a cup of coffee for Boston. Gasper immediately joins the Twins 40-man roster. (Moran had been removed in 2023.)
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    ”We’ve been trying to reach you about your shortstop’s extended warranty…”
  15. 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.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    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.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    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.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    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.
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    It's actually worse than that -- Correa was 10th among AL shortstops, not even all of MLB, in the first all-star vote update. Cleveland's Rocchio had more than double Correa's vote total. I wonder if this is impacted by Comcast/Midco dropping Bally Sports, limiting the Twins get-out-the-vote power. (It doesn't look like Comcast operates much in Cleveland?) Pre-hot streak, 10th in MLB might have been about right. Through June 5th, Correa's 111 wRC+ ranked 12th among "primary" MLB shortstops with 170+ PA per Fangraphs.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    Friday June 9 is the next deadline -- the judge issued an order yesterday that Bally/Diamond has 5 business days to pay the Twins (and Guardians and Rangers). But, don't get your hopes up for an immediate outcome here like Padres. The reason that Bally/Diamond declined to pay the Padres was because Bally/Diamond was losing money on that deal -- the Padres contract called for a higher rights payment. With a lower payment due to the Twins, it's likely that Bally/Diamond makes this payment before the June 9 deadline and kicks this can down the road a little further.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    I suspect that "eligible out of market games" -- in the context of the single-team Padres package -- just means that those subscribers can still watch Padres games even if they live/travel outside the Padres market, as long as it's not a national exclusive. (That was the original behavior of the single team packages -- the new Padres arrangement just adds in-market streaming on top of that.)
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    Bump, as this promotion is live now. If you don't have T-Mobile, you can ask a friend or family member with T-Mobile to redeem it on your behalf. You can also find T-Mobile customers trading their unneeded MLBTV subscriptions for $5 on the Slickdeals forum.
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    The last major broadcast radio innovation was the widely ignored HD Radio, which suggests that the public doesn't care too much about broadcast radio anymore in general. FWIW, the last couple of cars I've owned haven't had very good AM reception anyway. Unless I'm willing to tolerate a lot of hiss and interference, it's typically a much better experience to scan the FM dial for the closest affiliate while I am driving. But I'm guessing most fans would just open an app instead.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    Unless there is some plan to replace AM radio itself, or repurpose its broadcast frequencies, I suspect it would still hang around for awhile, even if it's not supported in new electric cars.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    True. A lot of people seem surprised to learn that you can still get TV broadcasts over an antenna too.
×
×
  • Create New...