https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/47552639/sources-9-mlb-teams-end-deals-main-street-sports-group I hadn't heard about this but apparently 9 more MLB teams just lost their RSNs. But most interesting was this nugget: The nine MLB teams that remained with Main Street Sports coming off the bankruptcy period signed new deals. None of those deals, though, extends beyond 2028, according to a source, which falls in line with MLB's hopes of putting all 30 teams under a national umbrella by then. If MLB gets more and more teams under it's media setup, it might naturally help level the financial playing field some. Though I can't imagine the biggest markets going along with it.
No kidding?!? This is what MLB has been working toward for years, they're just waiting on local rights to expire. Then you get centralized media rights run though MLB. Manafort has been all over this for the past few years.
The article suggests otherwise. There's no reason for 9 teams to separately concidentally sign media deals that end in 2028 without some guidance from MLB.
It was literally the only part of the article I quoted in the post you responded to. The nine MLB teams that remained with Main Street Sports coming off the bankruptcy period signed new deals. None of those deals, though, extends beyond 2028, according to a source, which falls in line with MLB's hopes of putting all 30 teams under a national umbrella by then.
MLB.TV (the streaming package) came out in 2001 or 2002 I believe. Think about how far ahead of the times they were. This is pre-WIFI. This is still in the era of dial-up internet. This is right around when HD TV's start to come out. 7-8 years before smartphones. They had streaming before anybody. Granted, it was re-packaging team's RSN feeds and making it available to all (with severe blackout restrictions due to those RSN agreements), but having that much of a head-start on the rest of every sport should have put them in a prime position to lead the charge for a centralized umbrella. Unfortunately legacy deals, RSN takeovers, and the big market teams that have their own network have perpetually delayed a 'better' option for the consumer... but the league's future financial and overall health will be 100% determined by what sort of equitable television rights distribution they can settle on, which will hopefully be equal opportunities for all teams to benefit.
