Now you know why you have a B on the bottom score line on your regional Fox Sports or rather now regional Bally Sports channel.
Edit add on the rebrand was launched on 3/31/21 to avoid issues with April Fools But more realistically with MLB Opening Day
The graphics are horrible. I get Bally wants to subtlety be pushing gambling, but the scrolling score ticker is a relic of the 90s. Us degenerates know the score of every game we have action on. It’s available to us at a seconds notice on our phone. I don’t want to spend 5 minutes not paying attention to the game waiting for my game I’ve got action on to come across the bottom. If you want to peak my gambling interest, show me gambling lines.
if they keep all of Fox's inferior camera and graphics equipment, with terrible branding and god knows what Sinclair will do to it then fuck that. wish I lived in a market with the other regional options.
I can’t imagine MLB owners and officials are too excited about Sinclair and the streaming devices parting ways for now. Baseball is probably one of the most regional sports, it doesn’t have a huge weekly games like the other sports (SNF/MNF and TNT), add on that baseball is already struggling with its boring image and this could go sour quick.
My parents refuse to cut the cord, so I am reaping the benefits by using their xFinity login to watch my local RSN.
Gotta love seeing Sinclair lose billions. The next 10-15 years of network sports broadcasting deals are going to be wild with how fractured this is becoming. Sports are still the golden goose for advertising dollars, but people get their service from so many different providers that I think these regional networks are going to sink. I wonder if franchises would end up selling non-exclusive rights to a bunch of different platforms.
It always made sense for the teams to own their own stations, or for the teams in an individual city to band together to own their own stations, so the leagues getting involved makes a lot of sense. It'll create profits for the teams well beyond what the regional networks paid for rights.
I assume those teams would have to find new rights holders. I could see the leagues working with those teams to package them together for the best deal. I believe that’s what the MLB is gearing up for with that guy they hired from Sinclair.
So I have the MLB season package and most of those games are I believe Bally covered. I have to imagine this will probably affect my coverage right?
The teams own and manage the broadcasts and then sell them to the TV carriers. Now, the teams may rely upon the money from the networks to fund the production - so you could see a falloff in staff and production value if that revenue isn't replaced.
they are probably gone forever; just no way to get them in enough homes without paying an unprofitable carriage fee the leagues will no longer have a contract and will go back to market for the local rights could see some packaging them to Apple/Amazon/Disney for streaming; with a small package for each city's version of a WGN (local channel in most homes in the footprint). Similar to what MLS did. Streaming for those rights is the future. Pay per model where fan pays $10/mo to watch their team with other in-house produced content. Sinclair was about to try this as a last ditch effort.
Sinclair may try to salvage their best pieces in a reorganization. Who knows how they go about it. But its clear the Diamond Sports stuff aint an asset they are going to keep and no creditor will want it either.
Could teams not just go back to local market channels? Rays were on the local WB channel, then local Ion channel. Sunday home games were owned by local cbs affiliate
it will be determined league to league most likely; MLB has always allowed teams to take their own rights and do with it as they wish but the television mkt is different than ever before. but generally pooling all the rights together is more profitable than going at it alone. Leagues could decide there are too many losers out there if enough individual markets dont have a spot for them. Only place in Atlanta that teams could conceivably go is the old WTBS now called Peachtree TV and they already nixed the Braves last decade. Would not think they have the available bandwidth for both NBA and MLB, let alone 1.
its complicated but not every team is being left out to dry they may just try to patchwork fix it then time every contract up to expire close together
Depends, they could get sold to a new owner individually or in groups, or they could get shuttered and have the assets liquidated. I think somebody would want to buy at least some geographical areas. The same family owns they Wings and Tigers - Detroit might be in play for them
The Wings, Tigers, and Pistons havent been watchable since about 2016 unless you're DeToxRox or MG2 . Maybe 2023-2024 seasons are the year!
In fairness I have watched just about every Wings game, but not the Tigers and Pistons. So in that sense, I’m getting by with ESPN+ and a VPN. I get all my Tigers and Pistons news from noted insider Vinegar Strokes
The app blows. I have to pay monthly to watch the Cavs as opposed to the cheaper yearly rate because while the Guardians are on Bally’s on cable, they aren’t televised on the app.
there was a big braves/phillies game 2 years ago to decide the division and for two full innings, bally went to commercial break during every other af bat such a terrible product
https://theathletic.com/5149762/2023/12/19/amazon-diamond-sports-investment/ Amazon could help Diamond Sports out of bankruptcy, but impact on MLB might be limited: Sources ' Diamond Sports — holder of TV rights for 11 MLB teams — and Major League Baseball are working toward a deal that would create some certainty around which teams Diamond will or will not broadcast in the near term — specifically during the 2024 MLB season. Diamond is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, and after 2024, Diamond could well be broken up as part of its reorganization plan. But there is also the possibility that through the bankruptcy process, Diamond could continue to exist beyond 2024 in an altered form. Diamond and its creditors are in talks with a major streaming partner, Amazon, to create such a proposal, one that would ultimately need approval from the court, people briefed on the discussions said Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal first reported the potential of Amazon investing in Diamond. MLB and Diamond Sports declined to comment. Amazon did not immediately return a request for comment. Negotiations are said to be ongoing and have produced positive momentum, one person briefed on the talks said. But the potential impact on baseball is both complicated and limited. Diamond today carries the rights to just below 40 teams across MLB, the NBA and the NHL. If a deal went through, Amazon would be able to broadcast the teams for which Diamond holds digital rights, or streaming rights as they’re alternatively called. But importantly, Diamond doesn’t hold digital rights for every one of the teams it broadcasts over the air. Diamond, via its various Bally-branded regional sports networks, currently carries 11 MLB teams’ TV broadcasts: Los Angeles Angels, Milwaukee Brewers, Atlanta Braves, St. Louis Cardinals, Cleveland Guardians, Miami Marlins, Texas Rangers, Tampa Bay Rays, Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers. But Diamond is said to currently only carry the digital rights to five of those teams: the Tigers, Royals, Marlins, Brewers and Rays. Therefore, even if Diamond and Amazon do wind up with a court-approved arrangement, Diamond could not stream games via Amazon for any of its other MLB teams beyond those five. Of course, other teams and MLB could negotiate with Diamond for expanded digital rights access, but MLB and Diamond have not seen eye to eye on the worth of MLB’s streaming rights.
I love Bally because they make baseball games impossible to watch and that’s how it should be. Regular season baseball should be earned, not given.