Sixty years ago, baseball commissioner Ford Frick received a telegram from a Wisconsin congressman. Rep. Henry Reuss was worried the Milwaukee Braves would defect to Atlanta for the promise of a richer television contract, and proposed a fix: if all the Major League Baseball<\/a> teams would share their television money, then the Braves<\/a> might stay.<\/p>\n According to the Associated Press, Frick replied in that summer of 1964 that \u201c\u2026 a plan to pool all television receipts would not be feasible or acceptable at this time,\u201d but would be \u201cworthy of future consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, in 2024, that conversation has arrived. Commissioner Rob Manfred and some of the sport\u2019s owners are more seriously talking about nationalizing baseball\u2019s TV rights than ever before. Not because of relocation, but because of cord-cutting, the failure of some traditional regional sports networks, and the simultaneous battle for streaming supremacy waged by Netflix, Amazon and other streamers that has left sports leagues and rights holders in a chaotic reformation.<\/p>\n Some baseball owners and executives, mostly in smaller markets, believe the best way to grow media revenues over the long haul is to centralize the deal-making, and from there, to potentially sell all 30 teams\u2019 regular-season broadcasts as one streaming package. Others in the game, particularly those whose teams make the most money, are vehemently opposed to surrendering their power over their rights.<\/p>\n The hurdles to such a change are massive, but that it is even being contemplated is remarkable. The end of local media rights in baseball would be one of the most radical alterations imaginable in the tumultuous world of sports television. Unsurprisingly, the possibility is also controversial.<\/p>\n \u201cAs the local media situation evolves, we will continue to evaluate the best model for us moving forward,\u201d Manfred said in a statement to The Athletic<\/em>. \u201cOur course of action will be determined by the clubs, who are the ultimate decision makers under our constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n While MLB has long arranged various national media deals \u2014 including for the postseason, with networks such as FOX and TBS, and for Sunday night games during the regular season, with ESPN \u2014 individual teams have always controlled most of their regular-season inventory, as well as the choice of television stations they partner with inside their home markets. (The central office already controls each team\u2019s \u201cout-of-market\u201d rights, which is why fans in New York can sign up for MLB.tv and watch any game besides the Mets\u2019<\/a> or Yankees\u2019<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Doing away with local rights could eliminate many of the blackout restrictions that frustrate fans. But not all clubs believe Manfred\u2019s office could utilize the rights better than they do individually.<\/p>\n The most divisive matter, though, is the dollars. Regardless of how a commissioner deployed the rights, the question would be: How is the revenue distributed, by equal split or otherwise? The New York Yankees received an estimated $143 million as a rights fee in 2022, much greater than a team like the Colorado Rockies<\/a>, which received $57 million that same year, according to Forbes<\/a>.\u00a0It is ultimately, then, a rekindling of baseball\u2019s classic drama, big market vs. small.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything is on the table for the future, because it\u2019s so unknown,\u201d Sam Kennedy, president of the big-market Boston Red Sox<\/a>, said during spring training. \u201cLook, there\u2019s always issues that come up where large-market teams have a different view than the small-market teams. In the end, the greater good of the industry is what we have to also focus on.\u201d<\/p>\n A new era is just beginning in sports broadcasting, and the changes are happening quickly. On Wednesday, Netflix and the NFL<\/a> announced that the streamer would newly carry Christmas Day games. Netflix is paying in the neighborhood of $75 million per game.<\/p>\n Elsewhere Wednesday, the other three major men\u2019s sports leagues in the U.S., MLB, the NBA<\/a> and the NHL<\/a>, were in court arguing<\/a> that one of their most significant broadcast partners, Diamond Sports Group, was bumbling its way through bankruptcy and a carriage dispute with a prominent cable company, Comcast. This month, a dozen MLB teams carried on Diamond\u2019s Bally-branded channels cannot be viewed by Comcast\u2019s roughly 13.6 million television customers.<\/p>\n \n Then on Thursday, FOX, Warner Bros. Discovery and Hulu announced the name of their upcoming sports package: \u201cvenu.\u201d<\/p>\n The prospect of a big payout from a streaming company is naturally alluring in baseball circles. Regional sports networks have traditionally committed a lot of money to teams upfront. Streamers might act differently, preferring a risk-reward model \u2014 the more people who flock to the content, the more money that is paid. But in the long run, as the streamers jockey for position, Manfred could bet that Amazon and its ilk will pay more in aggregate than the traditional RSNs do today for fragmented content.<\/p>\n The heart of the discussion, then, is really whether baseball could thrive as a \u201cnational\u201d sport. Ironically, the national pastime is often regarded as a local game.<\/p>\n \u201cLike almost everything in American life, it\u2019s all about money,\u201d former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent said in a phone interview. \u201cThe money is so enormously tilted locally. You know, trying to get yourself, if you\u2019re living in New York, interested in a game where Seattle is flying to San Diego or something \u2014 it just doesn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n MLB just sold a package of Sunday-morning games to Roku, which The Athletic<\/em> reported Thursday<\/a> was for $10 million per year. Previously, Peacock had paid $30 million per season for the same package. Roku, unlike Peacock, does not require a paid subscription, but MLB\u2019s lessened fee was nonetheless discouraging to some officials.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just goes to show, there\u2019s no national package,\u201d said an executive in the sport granted anonymity to speak candidly. \u201cPeople want to pay only for the premium teams.\u201d<\/p>\n One sport has long thrived on a national rights model: the National Football League. At the time that Frick made his comments in 1964, the NFL was already negotiating deals as one entity.<\/p>\n But the sports were in different places then, as they are now. The once-a-week NFL schedule has always delivered a much smaller number of games compared to baseball\u2019s nightly cadence.<\/p>\n \u201cThe local television contract in football simply never had that much value in the early days, because of the small inventory,\u201d said James Walker, professor emeritus of communication at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, who has authored books about baseball\u2019s broadcasting history. \u201cWhat that meant is that the (football) teams, when they established their television policy, were much closer in parity. The notion of big-market team versus small-market team simply didn\u2019t have the same meaning in the NFL, as it always did in Major League Baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n Football\u2019s move to nationalize rights is an achievement often credited to a titan among sports commissioners, Pete Rozelle, who took over in 1960. Walker said that a predecessor of Rozelle\u2019s, Bert Bell, actually deserves attention to that end as well.<\/p>\n Whether Manfred wants to be remembered as the Rozelle of baseball, or the Bell, is one of the more interesting questions as Manfred marches toward his planned retirement in 2029.<\/p>\n Manfred\u2019s mission is likely simple: make the most money with the most certainty possible, be it by going into the local media business headlong or outsourcing it, as has long been the norm. But any substantive change is going to require him to corral his 30 bosses, and a rights-structure change might be a bridge too far.<\/p>\n \u201cIn baseball, it\u2019s very difficult for a commissioner to get owners to work for the collective good,\u201d Walker said. \u201cThe idea that at this stage, the Yankees would suddenly agree to pool their local rights, in some kind of shared configuration \u2014 it\u2019s not impossible that that could happen.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it would basically mean you\u2019d have to figure out a way that the Yankees receive what they consider to be their fair compensation. And you\u2019d be going against the grain. If you go back to the radio era, you\u2019re really talking about 90 years of history.\u201d<\/p>\n Existing contracts between teams and regional sports networks are a huge predicament. Some teams have deals with RSNs that run into the 2030s. These deals have often promised exclusivity to the RSN, such that MLB couldn\u2019t just turn around and bundle the games as it saw fit with a simulcast.<\/p>\n Hence, even if the teams agreed to nationalize local rights tomorrow, and assigned their current deals over to the league office, MLB would have to wait until some expire to use the rights in new ways \u2014 or it would have to otherwise negotiate an early end to those deals. The Dodgers\u2019<\/a> TV contract, for example, goes through 2038.<\/p>\n The league also might have to negotiate changes with the players\u2019 union, because revenue sharing between teams is collectively bargained. That means the next CBA negotiations, in 2026, could bring these issues to a head. The MLBPA declined comment.<\/p>\n Alternative theories exist as to the direction baseball or any sport should go. Perhaps greater revenue exists in developing packages grouped together by market, rather than by sport: a New York bundle across various leagues, and so forth.<\/p>\n A three-quarters vote typically allows the owners to modify the sport\u2019s constitution. But support anywhere short of 100 percent for a shift in the rights setup could leave MLB in perilous territory. If any owner felt the league was improperly assuming something of value, lawsuits could fly.<\/p>\n In a nuanced distinction: MLB could launch some sort of smaller national streaming package, one with perhaps half the teams, without changing its actual rights system. Some teams today are not in exclusive deals with RSNs, freeing them up for the league to roll up into a bundle immediately. Manfred has expressed interest in doing this as soon as 2025, but he doesn\u2019t have enough teams he could pool together <\/span>at this point<\/span><\/a> for a viable product. That could change later this year, however, if Diamond Sports Group fails to emerge from bankruptcy.<\/span><\/p>\n Asked in February if the idea of moving away from local rights would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, Kennedy said, \u201cThe world is changing fast.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cConsumers need to have the ability to access our product, our games, whenever they want, wherever they want, quickly,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cWe can\u2019t make it difficult.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.theathletic.com\/app\/uploads\/2023\/04\/12120753\/GettyImages-1481490948.jpg\")
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The Diamond Sports Group bankruptcy has been an ongoing problem for MLB. (David Berding \/ Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n