I was going to write another Lamar Jackson column but I’m just not sure how many times I can say, “I have something to say, there’s nothing more to say.”
The Orioles began spring training games this past weekend, which brought back one of the great traditions in Baltimore baseball: the inability for fans to punctuate their excitement for the return of baseball by, you know, watching the games.
Allow me to preface by acknowledging that the purpose of this column is not to bitch about MASN not airing more spring training games. I think it should. I’ve always thought it should. I think the Orioles should try to find other ways to air more games digitally if for some reason they can’t air them on MASN. But I don’t have 1,000 more words in me about this at this point. We’ve been doing this for so long that it feels unsportsmanlike to even address it. As I’ve said, I probably wouldn’t be the guy to sit around and watch exhibition baseball games for a month but if they’re going to happen, the option should exist.
It’s interesting that the Orioles’ lack of spring training exposure returned to our lives on the same weekend as another moment that could prove to be seminal within sports broadcasting. It’s a pivotal moment that could provide clarity not just for the Birds’ spring training conundrum but for the future of baseball broadcasting (particularly given recent events) as a whole.
MLS season got underway this past weekend. Admittedly, I’m not a big MLS guy (although, full disclosure, I greatly enjoyed a short stint I spent calling matches for DC United a few years back). When I heard the announcement that the league would be shifting all of its broadcasts from regional sports networks to an Apple TV-hosted streaming option, I didn’t think much of it. And if I thought anything, I probably thought it was a step backward.
But I took a look at the product this past weekend out of curiosity and perused the responses of MLS fans and as it turns out, it’s a total game-changer. The pictures were sharp, the broadcasts were crisp. The concept is very much a digital version of the NFL model. Each game has one “national” broadcast with independent broadcasters, with the league offering the option for fans to combine the neutral pictures with a home radio broadcast to create a “local” TV broadcast. (Some games each week are still available over the air via national networks in addition to the streaming.)
It genuinely worked. And it would work elsewhere.
The first thing that came to mind is that it would be a perfect way for MLB to handle spring training broadcasts. The league can centralize the product, streamline the process and make sure some sort of broadcast is available for every game. Not airing spring training games isn’t unique to the Orioles. The defending World Series champion Astros will see only have eight spring training games air on AT&T SportsNet in their own market.
So why not consider this concept? Unlike MLS (and the NFL), there would be almost no travel costs. Broadcasters would be centralized in Florida and Arizona and some games would still be available traditionally over the air via MLB Network and ESPN (or another partner). A specific MLB.TV subscription would be available for spring training only. Everyone wins, right? Let’s start this today!
The thing is … not everyone would be on board. There are some teams that view spring training broadcasts as a legitimate money-maker. NESN, for example, would seemingly be uninterested in losing local rights to Red Sox spring training. Despite a last-place finish by the Red Sox last year, their regional sports network is going to air 27 games this spring! NESN appears to be successfully selling advertising into spring games, making the broadcasts worthwhile.
So maybe there needs to be a next step to all of this. And the timing might be perfect. Perhaps you’ve heard about the uncertainty surrounding the future of Diamond Sports Group, the company responsible for the regional networks that own the rights for roughly half of MLB teams. Should Diamond Sports Group end up in bankruptcy, MLB might be forced to radically reconsider everything it does about broadcasting. Perhaps the MLS model provides a blueprint for the future of what watching baseball will be like.
Considerations would have to be made for allowing local advertising to be sold into post-regional sports network broadcasts. Major-market teams have had significant financial advantages not only because of ticket sales and stadium advertising but because their regional broadcasts have greater sales capacity. Producing singular neutral “national” broadcasts each night NFL- or MLS-style would not work for major-market baseball teams, which would also be as interested in full revenue sharing as Tony Clark is in discussing a salary cap.
But if local broadcasts could still be produced and sold through the teams themselves via one platform (be it MLB.TV or another partner service), we might well be cooking with gas. It would render the remaining regional cable networks worthless, but we can’t pretend like cable networks are long for the media landscape anyway.
Even if you’re not a soccer fan, it’s worth taking a look at what MLS is doing. It absolutely appears to be the next evolution of sports broadcasting. Whether it’s a simple solution for Orioles fans wanting to watch Heston Kjerstad and Jackson Holliday in February or a permanent solution for the future of the game altogether (that accidentally settles the otherwise eternal MASN debate in the process), it looks like it could change the way we view sports altogether.
Photo Credit: Ed Sheahin/Gary Sousa/PressBox