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Leagues and Governing Bodies

In-market game streaming finally a reality for MLB

As MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred last week formally announced a three-year in-market streaming deal with Fox Sports beginning with the start of the 2016 season, Bob Bowman watched in the back with a great deal of relief and satisfaction.

Manfred’s announcement, calling for authenticated digital streams for the 15 clubs Fox broadcasts regionally, arrived more than eight years after an internal memo from then-league Commissioner Bud Selig described the subject as a “logjam.” And for Bowman, now MLB’s president of business and media, in-market streaming has long been one of his thorniest and most discussed issues, with many false starts over the past half-decade.

“It’s been a long time. We’ve been at this, obviously, for quite a while,” Bowman said. “But this is a good deal, a fair deal, one that was negotiated tough on both sides. And one that in the end benefits the fan.”

The Fox deal calls for MLB Advanced Media’s BAM Tech unit to manage the live streams, which will be publicly accessible through the Fox Sports Go video application and distributors’ own websites and mobile apps. Regional sports networks will additionally pay around 4 percent of their overall media deals for each team, but in return will gain a potentially powerful new source of advertising inventory and fan engagement.

The immediate follow-up questions, though, were if and when the regional sports networks serving the other 14 U.S.-based MLB clubs will follow suit. While Comcast, Time Warner, Root Sports, and team-owned operations such as the New England Sports Network and Mid-Atlantic Sports Network collectively don’t carry as many teams as does Fox by itself, they were still absent from the initial announcement.

Several individual teams and their local media rights holders do have streaming rights contemplated as part of their agreements. But that digital distribution remains preconditioned on MLBAM and the RSN operations first striking an agreement.

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“We’re still working on it,” Bowman said regarding the other RSN groups. “But there’s a template now in place. Getting that template is an important step, and we’re very hopeful this start with Fox will help to accelerate the progress with the others.”

Additionally, Bowman said it was important to reach a deal first with an external rights holder such as Fox or Comcast, as opposed to a team-owned regional sports network, to show the rest of the industry that an in-market deal could be done without any allegations of insider dealing.

The other major unknown coming out of the MLB-Fox Sports in-market deal is what the audiences will be for the new digital distribution of baseball. The NBA is in the final year of an initial three-year framework to stream games locally. Audience numbers for those streams have been guarded, but described by industry sources as low but steadily growing.

Baseball, meanwhile, is an everyday sport with a much more locally focused fan base. That likely suggests viewing patterns rather different from what has occurred in basketball.

“There are still a lot of unknowns. It’s all very interesting, but so many unknowns,” said a senior executive for a team not included in the Fox deal. The executive was not authorized to speak publicly on the topic. “There is still some difference of opinion, even among the clubs, where all of this is going, particularly as we continue to see more and more convergence.”

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