The Rockies’ evolution will be televised. We know that much.
But who’ll televise their games, how fans will view those games, how much fans will pay to watch, how many fans will tune in, and how a new TV deal will affect the club’s finances are major issues.
With spring training just five weeks away, the Rockies and Major League Baseball have yet to reveal a new game plan. A major league source said on Friday that an announcement is not imminent. When a plan is reached, indications are that MLB will acquire the broadcasting rights and produce the games, meaning that Rockies games would be available via streaming with an MLB.tv subscription.
Whether or not the Rockies and MLB have worked out a way to make games available to local fans via Comcast, the region’s dominant cable company, remains to be seen.
And while several clubs plan to reduce payrolls this season as the TV landscape shifts, Rockies general manager Bill Schmidt recently told The Denver Post, “That is not our plan.”
AT&T SportsNet Mountain Rocky Mountain had televised Rockies games since 1997, but last March, Warner Brothers Discovery, Inc. (WBD) announced it would cut off its rights payments to the Rockies, Houston Astros and Pittsburgh Pirates, whose games it aired through AT&T SportsNet. Rockies games remained on AT&T SportsNet through the 2023 season, but the regional sports network officially shut down Dec. 31.
Also in question is which announcers will remain on board. AT&T SportsNet’s on-air talent, including Drew Goodman, Jeff Huson, Ryan Spilborghs, Cory Sullivan and Jenny Cavnar, all independent contractors, were thrown into limbo when AT&T SportsNet shut down. Sources told The Post that there is a good chance the same crew will return to the Rockies’ new broadcasting platform in 2024, albeit under an altered and abbreviated format regarding pregame and postgame shows.
Although the on-air talent has been kept in the dark for months and has not been officially informed of their futures, with spring training on the horizon, it’s late in the game to hire a new crew of Rockies broadcasters.
A possible template for the Rockies’ TV plan, at least for the upcoming season, can be found in the experience of the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres last season.
Diamond Sports Group, a subsidiary of Sinclair that owned Bally Regional Sports Network and used to own the rights to televise the games of 14 MLB teams, went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings last March. Last May, Diamond Sports Group lost the rights to the Padres after failing to pay them their rights fees, so MLB rode to the rescue and took over broadcasts.
The league charged Padres fans $19.99 per month — or $74.99 for the rest of the regular season — to watch games on MLB.tv while also televising games on cable through additional channels. In July, MLB stepped in to take over the Diamondbacks’ telecasts. When the Padres and D-backs partnered with MLB to provide a direct-to-consumer streaming option, the local blackouts for fans on MLB.tv were lifted.
“We have been preparing for this groundbreaking moment,” Padres CEO Erik Greupner said in a statement last summer. “Our fans will now have unprecedented access to Padres games through both digital and traditional platforms throughout San Diego and beyond.”
With the collapse of regional sports networks (RSNs), MLB will have to carry the broadcasting load for more than half of its teams. Before Game 1 of the World Series between the Rangers and Diamondbacks, commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters that MLB was prepared to take over production and distribution for a number of teams. MLB, however, will not subsidize teams’ TV money as it did last season with Arizona and San Diego.
“We will be in a position that we can handle up to 16 teams next year,” Manfred said, adding that while MLB has hit a rough patch with the failure of RSNs, he sees a bright future in digital streaming.
“I give you the San Diego example,” he told Sports Illustrated. “We had virtually no notice — I mean, literally hours’ worth of notice. We picked them up in the middle of a season, and, frankly, picked them up when things weren’t going like a lot of people, particularly in San Diego, had hoped.
“And we sold 18,000 subscriptions in San Diego. And our ratings on the cable side essentially stayed the same; they were a little better. So what does that tell me? We have an unserved audience out there that is an economic opportunity for us to reach fans that we’re not reaching.”
Last summer, the Padres said that their new TV plan had the potential — emphasis on potential — to expand the reach of Padres games from approximately 1.130 million homes to approximately 3.264 million homes in their home television territory. The increase of 2.131 million homes marked an 189% jump in reach. Of course, that doesn’t mean all of those fans will buy the product.
The Rockies, however, are not the Padres, an expensive, star-studded club that has emerged as a popular team in San Diego even though they underperformed and failed to make the playoffs this past season. The Rockies lost a franchise-record 103 games, and although they averaged 32,196 fans per game at Coors Field (ranking 14th in home attendance), their TV ratings continued a dramatic slide.
“With all of the losses, the Rockies’ ratings took a big hit this past summer,” one source told The Post.
The poor ratings came on the heels of the 2022 season in which the Rockies drew an average of just 15,000 household viewers per game, according to Forbes and Nielsen Media. Only the Miami Marlins and Oakland Athletics had worse ratings. It should be noted, however, that Nielsen ratings don’t capture all of the viewers who watch games via streaming, so the number of fans who watched Rockies games is likely higher.
Still, it’s reasonable to ask if disgruntled Rockies fans will be willing to shell out $20 a month to stream games for a team that projects to post a losing record for its sixth consecutive season.
It’s also reasonable to assume the Rockies will not make as much TV money this season as they did last year when they took in about $57 million as part of a multi-year deal with AT&T SportsNet that started in 2019. Several other teams have already indicated that they plan to reduce payrolls in 2024 as the TV situation evolves.
Last May, Manfred testified in bankruptcy court that MLB was prepared to subsidize teams dropped by Diamond Sports Group up to 80% of what they would have made in 2023. But Manfred said that the league will not subsidize those teams, or any teams, in 2024. He declined to speculate in detail what it might mean for payroll going forward.
The Minnesota Twins netted $54.8 million last season through now-defunct Bally, and Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey acknowledged during the general manager’s meetings in November that the club’s payroll wouldn’t be nearly as high in 2024 as it was last season, when the Twins won the AL Central and won a postseason series for the first time since 2002.
According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Twins could reduce payroll from last year’s record-high $154 million down to the $125 million to $140 million range.
“We’ve pushed our payroll to heights that we had never pushed it before with the support, certainly, of ownership,” Falvey told reporters. “We know there is some natural ebb and flow to that. Will it be where it was last year? I don’t expect that. I expect it less than that. Some of that may come more organically.”
According to Spotrac.com, the Rockies’ total payroll last season was $171 million, ranking 14th in the majors. At present, their payroll sits at $131.2 million (15th). Whether that number increases depends on whether or not the Rockies make any major acquisitions.
Although Schmidt recently said that Colorado doesn’t plan to shed payroll, at last month’s winter meetings he said he was uncertain about the club’s finances this season with the TV deal in limbo.
“We’ll see,” he said. “I’m not sure where we’re headed. … We have a payroll, I’m not going to say what it is, but it’s something we have to deal with. It’s real.”
One unlikely alternative solution to the Rockies’ TV dilemma would have seen the club hook up with Altitude Sports, joining the Nuggets and Avalanche to form a three-team regional sports network.
According to an August report by Sports Business Journal, Altitude approached the Rockies with the hope that its 162-game schedule would help Altitude resolve its dispute with Comcast, which owns Colorado’s dominant cable system in Xfinity. Comcast has not carried Altitude since September 2019. But the Rockies joining Altitude seems unlikely, at least at this time.
The bottom line future for the Rockies, and the majority of MLB teams is this: Teams that do not have RSN deals (the Dodgers, Cubs and Yankees own their own, lucrative networks) will become part of MLB Media. In addition to producing games, the league will attempt to work out deals with local cable distributors, sell advertising from those games, and give the advertising money back to the team. Those teams’ games will also be available direct-to-consumer streaming through MLB.tv. Revenue from out-of-market subscriptions will go to MLB, but in-market subscriptions and in-market advertising revenue will go to the local clubs.
And while the Rockies’ long-term TV plan remains muddled, one thing is crystal clear: the evolution will continue.
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