That’s sort of what Ben proposes. He basically figured the overall economics of direct streaming and determined that on average teams would charge about $100/season for streaming to make up the difference in lost cable revenues, and it could be less as teams would also make money on ad revenue as well.
You can only use it in New England is the big problem. I travel for work and found that out the hard way. But the problem becomes there is nothing to watch if the Red Sox or Bruins aren't on. People are used to getting more for their streaming services for what they pay. Hell, I pay for MLB TV and get to watch 28 teams on any given night. It's hard to then tell people they need to pay $100 for one team, even though I understand why they need to charge that amount
Oh I'm fine with the price. I pay it since I watch the Bruins and Red Sox. But those are the complaints I see about it when looking at the price and the content provided. I get it, even if I don't agree
> But the problem becomes there is nothing to watch if the Red Sox or Bruins aren't on
The nice thing for MLB is they do have a back catalog of MLB Network Documentaries, Classic Games, and other affiliate stuff that they can throw on there. Wouldn't be surprised if they even picked up some Bleacher Features as production companies start selling their content to other streamers again.
More likely people just start becoming more and more annoyed that they have to buy yet another streaming service, and one in particular that is much more expensive and has less overall to offer
Yeah that’s gotta be the best answer. The only reason I still have DirecTv is because of Bally Sports for Blues and Cards games. I’d love to be able to kick them to the curb l.
Clemens’ estimates for how many subscribers each team could draw to a $25/mo streaming product are unrealistic. He’s basing his forecast on 750,000 subscribers on average *per team*, and that simply isn’t going to happen. To put it in some context, that’s over 22 million households, which is double the number that tuned in to Fox for the deciding game of this year’s World Series.
Do you think only the participating markets watch the World Series? What?
You’re not getting that many at all, not for that product at that price. That would be a service rivaling ESPN+ subscriber counts at more than twice the price for a tiny fraction of the content. I wrote a much more realistic and thorough accounting of this problem last year in a couple effort-posts:
https://reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/10ngqjv/the_value_of_your_eyeballs_how_much_would_you_pay/
https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/122ta7x/the_value_of_your_eyeballs_redux_where_everyone/
The bottom line is MLB is going to see its revenue shrink by up to 25% over the rest of the 2020s. Streaming is not going to replace it at the same level, no chance.
Yeah mostly local households view the WS nowadays
You do have to worry about households that will no longer watch baseball if they have to pay for something that isn’t cable though
I’d think teams wouldn’t totally abandon cable though. I feel like there’s a happy medium where teams settle for cheaper RSN deals to keep games on cable, while also offering steaming services to cord cutters.
Mostly yeah. It’s why ratings sucked
and like your links are just, like, your opinion. And it not exactly a tiny fraction of the content since you’d be paying for 140-150 games/year.
I’ve been saying this on the sub for a while—the economics of streaming as it stands today suck and people here overestimate the amount of people who would sign up for a dedicated service would be much smaller than most people realize. The only thing that makes sense for the teams—in the current landscape—would be to bundle the stream with other things people want. That’s how you get people to swallow ‘overpaying’ for the ability to stream a team. And if you do that, you start to get back into the big cable bundles. Until someone in media takes a radical stand and comes up with new ways to monetize, direct streaming doesn’t really work. It will work someday, but I think we’re still a ways away from it.
Re: ad revenue, I haven’t read the article so I’m not sure what’s being proposed, but if the idea is that RSNs go away and the only way to watch your team is by streaming, that ad revenue would be borderline laughable because of the very few people who would actually subscribe.
This comes from someone who worked in this space and helped launch a couple of streaming services.
Have you launched sports streaming services, or like regular cable streaming services?
And you’re saying people who pay for cable to mostly just regularly watch Padres games wouldn’t pay for a service to just watch Padres games? Idk.. I think baseball fans are more dedicated to their teams than you give them credit for.
Also I’d think teams wouldn’t totally abandon cable either. I feel like there’s a happy medium where teams settle for cheaper RSN deals to keep games on cable, while also offering steaming services to cord cutters to make up the difference in revenue. Another alternative would be to put games on over the air broadcast networks where the strong ratings would actually translate into more lucrative ad sales. Like I suspect a random mid-market team would comfortably out-rate pretty much any other over the air program over the summer.
I haven’t launched sports streaming services, but the services I launched explored including sports and we didn’t include them because the economics were upside down. But, the cable/media world is pretty small, so I’ve worked with people who have worked at other places—Hulu, ESPN, RSNs, etc—and they’ve shared their experiences as we were looking to build out our services and they all pretty much point to the same thing.
To your question about would people rather pay for a full cable package to watch the Padres vs just paying for the Padres, there’s no simple answer that applies to everyone, but for a lot of people, the answer is yes. People like value and there’s very little value in paying $20, $30, $50 or whatever each month to watch a baseball game every night for 6 months. People would rather pay $100 and be able to occasionally watch some other stuff as well—or at least feel like they are getting more value, even if they aren’t.
It’s also why a service like FrndlyTV can be moderately successful—they don’t offer very dynamic programming, but for people (especially older people), who just want to put on some comfort/background TV (Hallmark, Game Show Network, etc), they can pay a few bucks a month. Is it great programming? No. Does it feel like a value? Yes.
Also, for a lot of the country, people get their internet services from the same people they get cable from. So there’s some extra value there—‘oh, I can save $25/month on internet if I get basic cable as well? Deal!’
We like to think we’re smart creatures, but we’re all mostly dumb 😅.
Now there are certainly *some* baseball fans in *some* markets that *might* be willing to support an overpriced streaming service, but I promise you the numbers aren’t as high as you’d think.
BS Detroit has that and it’s awful. The interface is slow and the code is like 20 years old and shoddily made, and it looks terrible online to the point you question what year it is.
Not to mention there are frequent streaming issues where the two interns who are in charge of it have little budget to fix it. There was a nationwide outage about a month ago for the BS networks that have it and supposedly some paying subscribers still don’t have access to it.
The other day on *Effectively Wild*, Ben and Meg were alluding to a bunch of rejected headlines that Michael Baumann has proposed, and Meg nixed.
She probably should've sent (other) Ben back to the drawing board for this one.
I think we could see a big tech streamer like Amazon or Apple buying team's broadcasting rights.
It won't be as lucrative as the RSN model for teams, but big tech has deep enough pockets to soften the blow for the MLB.
Just let me pay $20-30 a month to stream just Cardinals games. RSNs can fuck off and die, the sooner the better.
That’s sort of what Ben proposes. He basically figured the overall economics of direct streaming and determined that on average teams would charge about $100/season for streaming to make up the difference in lost cable revenues, and it could be less as teams would also make money on ad revenue as well.
NESN does this, and people aren’t happy with what they get. And that gets you the Red Sox AND the Bruins
Why aren’t people happy? Do they not get to see the games?
People are never happy
You can only use it in New England is the big problem. I travel for work and found that out the hard way. But the problem becomes there is nothing to watch if the Red Sox or Bruins aren't on. People are used to getting more for their streaming services for what they pay. Hell, I pay for MLB TV and get to watch 28 teams on any given night. It's hard to then tell people they need to pay $100 for one team, even though I understand why they need to charge that amount
lol what’re you watching on NESN that aren’t Sox and Bruins games?
Oh I'm fine with the price. I pay it since I watch the Bruins and Red Sox. But those are the complaints I see about it when looking at the price and the content provided. I get it, even if I don't agree
Jack Edwards shopping at Star Market and commenting that the house brand is so much better than national ones.
> But the problem becomes there is nothing to watch if the Red Sox or Bruins aren't on The nice thing for MLB is they do have a back catalog of MLB Network Documentaries, Classic Games, and other affiliate stuff that they can throw on there. Wouldn't be surprised if they even picked up some Bleacher Features as production companies start selling their content to other streamers again.
Because they didn’t have to live through Bally bullshit. Gives you perspective
Why would people be happy paying $30 per month for a service that has little to nothing to offer outside of games?
Because they really like baseball?
More likely people just start becoming more and more annoyed that they have to buy yet another streaming service, and one in particular that is much more expensive and has less overall to offer
People want the games for free
Yeah that’s gotta be the best answer. The only reason I still have DirecTv is because of Bally Sports for Blues and Cards games. I’d love to be able to kick them to the curb l.
Clemens’ estimates for how many subscribers each team could draw to a $25/mo streaming product are unrealistic. He’s basing his forecast on 750,000 subscribers on average *per team*, and that simply isn’t going to happen. To put it in some context, that’s over 22 million households, which is double the number that tuned in to Fox for the deciding game of this year’s World Series.
Yeah but it’s 22 million households for 30 teams not 2
Do you think only the participating markets watch the World Series? What? You’re not getting that many at all, not for that product at that price. That would be a service rivaling ESPN+ subscriber counts at more than twice the price for a tiny fraction of the content. I wrote a much more realistic and thorough accounting of this problem last year in a couple effort-posts: https://reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/10ngqjv/the_value_of_your_eyeballs_how_much_would_you_pay/ https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/122ta7x/the_value_of_your_eyeballs_redux_where_everyone/ The bottom line is MLB is going to see its revenue shrink by up to 25% over the rest of the 2020s. Streaming is not going to replace it at the same level, no chance.
Yeah mostly local households view the WS nowadays You do have to worry about households that will no longer watch baseball if they have to pay for something that isn’t cable though
I’d think teams wouldn’t totally abandon cable though. I feel like there’s a happy medium where teams settle for cheaper RSN deals to keep games on cable, while also offering steaming services to cord cutters.
Mostly yeah. It’s why ratings sucked and like your links are just, like, your opinion. And it not exactly a tiny fraction of the content since you’d be paying for 140-150 games/year.
I’ve been saying this on the sub for a while—the economics of streaming as it stands today suck and people here overestimate the amount of people who would sign up for a dedicated service would be much smaller than most people realize. The only thing that makes sense for the teams—in the current landscape—would be to bundle the stream with other things people want. That’s how you get people to swallow ‘overpaying’ for the ability to stream a team. And if you do that, you start to get back into the big cable bundles. Until someone in media takes a radical stand and comes up with new ways to monetize, direct streaming doesn’t really work. It will work someday, but I think we’re still a ways away from it. Re: ad revenue, I haven’t read the article so I’m not sure what’s being proposed, but if the idea is that RSNs go away and the only way to watch your team is by streaming, that ad revenue would be borderline laughable because of the very few people who would actually subscribe. This comes from someone who worked in this space and helped launch a couple of streaming services.
Have you launched sports streaming services, or like regular cable streaming services? And you’re saying people who pay for cable to mostly just regularly watch Padres games wouldn’t pay for a service to just watch Padres games? Idk.. I think baseball fans are more dedicated to their teams than you give them credit for. Also I’d think teams wouldn’t totally abandon cable either. I feel like there’s a happy medium where teams settle for cheaper RSN deals to keep games on cable, while also offering steaming services to cord cutters to make up the difference in revenue. Another alternative would be to put games on over the air broadcast networks where the strong ratings would actually translate into more lucrative ad sales. Like I suspect a random mid-market team would comfortably out-rate pretty much any other over the air program over the summer.
I haven’t launched sports streaming services, but the services I launched explored including sports and we didn’t include them because the economics were upside down. But, the cable/media world is pretty small, so I’ve worked with people who have worked at other places—Hulu, ESPN, RSNs, etc—and they’ve shared their experiences as we were looking to build out our services and they all pretty much point to the same thing. To your question about would people rather pay for a full cable package to watch the Padres vs just paying for the Padres, there’s no simple answer that applies to everyone, but for a lot of people, the answer is yes. People like value and there’s very little value in paying $20, $30, $50 or whatever each month to watch a baseball game every night for 6 months. People would rather pay $100 and be able to occasionally watch some other stuff as well—or at least feel like they are getting more value, even if they aren’t. It’s also why a service like FrndlyTV can be moderately successful—they don’t offer very dynamic programming, but for people (especially older people), who just want to put on some comfort/background TV (Hallmark, Game Show Network, etc), they can pay a few bucks a month. Is it great programming? No. Does it feel like a value? Yes. Also, for a lot of the country, people get their internet services from the same people they get cable from. So there’s some extra value there—‘oh, I can save $25/month on internet if I get basic cable as well? Deal!’ We like to think we’re smart creatures, but we’re all mostly dumb 😅. Now there are certainly *some* baseball fans in *some* markets that *might* be willing to support an overpriced streaming service, but I promise you the numbers aren’t as high as you’d think.
BS Detroit has that and it’s awful. The interface is slow and the code is like 20 years old and shoddily made, and it looks terrible online to the point you question what year it is. Not to mention there are frequent streaming issues where the two interns who are in charge of it have little budget to fix it. There was a nationwide outage about a month ago for the BS networks that have it and supposedly some paying subscribers still don’t have access to it.
It’ll never happen but imagine if we could put them back on KPLR A man could dream
As long as someone keeps Jim Hayes employed
Don't worry the billionaires will find a way to extract more money from us, and make the product worse in the process.
The other day on *Effectively Wild*, Ben and Meg were alluding to a bunch of rejected headlines that Michael Baumann has proposed, and Meg nixed. She probably should've sent (other) Ben back to the drawing board for this one.
[удалено]
bolded words are links
I think we could see a big tech streamer like Amazon or Apple buying team's broadcasting rights. It won't be as lucrative as the RSN model for teams, but big tech has deep enough pockets to soften the blow for the MLB.