Some franchises will lose cable TV partners in 2025
Rupert Murdoch’s FOX television executives must be pretty happy. Major League Baseball’s crown jewel event will feature the nation’s top two markets, New York and Los Angeles, and two of the business’s top brands, the Yankees and the Dodgers. If the two teams extend the series, FOX would get games in the November sweeps with game six scheduled for November 1st and the ultimate game seven scheduled for November 2nd. World Series games will win the night for FOX as the games will draw more eyeballs to the TV than whatever fare CBS, NBC, ABC and the CW network offer. In November, TV ratings are more important than October because advertising rates are set based on how many people watch shows in November.
For the next week, people will talk about how baseball has rebounded from the 2023 TV numbers when the Dallas-Fort Worth market’s Texas Rangers took on the Phoenix-based Arizona Diamondbacks and those numbers were not impressive. But before Major League Baseball officials do cartwheels, MLB has some serious television problems. Because the Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Diamond Sports Group is bankrupt, some teams have lost their cable-TV partners and with that millions upon millions of dollars. Diamond Sports Group had deals with 12 MLB teams in 2024. Three of the franchises Cleveland, Texas and Minnesota were on one-year deals. Nine other teams had deals with Diamond Sports in 2025, Anaheim, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Kansas City, Miami, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Tampa Bay. But Diamond Sports doesn’t want eight of the franchises. Diamond Sports only wants to carry Atlanta Braves’ games in 2025. Major League Baseball is not happy with Diamond Sports’ 2025 plans. MLB knows that the cable TV cash cow is coming to an end and something has to be done and done soon. The happiness over the 2024 World Series markets will not carry over this winter.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
Shohei Ohtani
