Major League Baseball (MLB), the sport’s elite competition in the US and Canada, has announced that it will produce local broadcasts for the Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers, and Minnesota Twins franchises in the 2025 season.
Home games contested by the three franchises will now be aired in their respective local areas on MLB’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming service MLB Network, which launched as a standalone DTC option in July.
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MLB has stated that the DTC broadcast deals will prove a major uplift to the broadcast of the teams, with the Guardians broadcast reach increasing from 1.45 million households to 4.86 million (up 235%), while the Twins’ reach will grow from 1.08 million households to 4.4 million (up 307%).
The move ends the prospective local TV blackout that had been imposed on the three clubs after they were dropped by ailing regional sports network (RSN) operator Diamond Sports Group (DSG) earlier in October.
Speaking on the announcement, MLB deputy commissioner Noah Garden stated: “With the media landscape continuing to evolve, Major League Baseball is committed to serving our fans by ensuring they can see their favorite clubs, removing blackouts where we can, and ultimately growing the reach of our games.”
MLB also picked up the local TV production and distribution rights to the Arizona Diamondbacks, Colorado Rockies, and San Diego Padres in the 2024 season in a similar deal after that trio also fled DSG.
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By GlobalDataGarden continued: “We are proud to bring Guardians, Brewers, and Twins games to their passionate fan bases with the same high-quality production that we have demonstrated in Arizona, Colorado, and San Diego.”
The Brewers, Guardians, and Twins franchises are three of the 11 that DSG is dropping or allowing to expire, with the remaining eight being the Tampa Bay Rays, Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Angels, Cincinnati Reds, Miami Marlins, St. Louis Cardinals, Kansas City Royals, and Texas Rangers.
Alongside the deals for the Brewers, Guardians, and Twins, the MLB also announced that the Texas Rangers are “considering their local media options for 2025.”
The announcement comes amid reports that MLB is expected to soon enter media rights talks with its broadcaster ESPN over a contract renewal that could also include local broadcast rights.
MLB’s current deal with ESPN runs through 2028, but the broadcaster holds an opt-out clause from 2025 onwards, ahead of which the pair are looking to negotiate a renewal that will secure the pair’s future together.
ESPN’s relationship with MLB dates back to 1989, and with the launch of its new “Flagship” OTT service set for 2025, the Disney-owned sports giant is reportedly looking to add local rights to teams in order to pad out the service’s offering.
This could provide a new local broadcast avenue for the teams that have been left out in the cold by the cancellation of their DSG contracts, and help the MLB to avert local broadcasts without having to take on production and distribution costs itself.
