Minnesota Twins fans rejoiced when the team announced its games would be produced by Major League Baseball in October. But a pair of teams backing out from their agreements could be a cause for concern ahead of the 2025 season.
The Cincinnati Reds announced on Monday that their games will be carried by FanDuel Sports Network in 2025 after previously announcing they would broadcast on MLB’s subscription-based service in November. The Milwaukee Brewers also made a similar decision after announcing their intent to have their games carried by MLB in October but pivoted pivot back to FDSN earlier this month.
The decisions by the Reds and the Brewers raise questions when it comes to MLB’s broadcast structure and could affect teams like the Twins, who appeared to leave their television nightmare behind them last fall.
Twins ended disastrous partnership with FanDuel Sports Network in October
The Twins have had television issues dating to when the Sinclair Broadcast Group sold the rights to its FOX Sports regional networks to Diamond Sports Group. The channel’s naming rights were purchased by Bally’s shortly after DSG purchased the RSNs and were pulled from most major streaming partners including YouTube TV in October 2020.
The Twins hinted at a split with DSG and even had play-by-play announcer Corey Provus suggest the end of blackouts was coming before the 2024 season but the Twins continued to have their games broadcasted on Bally’s Sports North. A few months later, DSG pulled the Bally’s Sports North channel amid a dispute with Comcast and Twins fans weren’t able to watch games for three months before the two sides came to a resolution last August.
The resolution didn’t appear to be enough to salvage DSG’s relationship with the Twins as the team announced that MLB would carry their games with a direct-to-consumer subscription service for $99.99 a year similar to the ones used by the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks next season.
The agreement also ended blackouts and created a new, dedicated channel through cable and satellite packages that will increase their exposure by approximately 4.4 million households according to a report from The Athletic’s Dan Hayes.
“We think Major League Baseball has done a really good job in producing those games,” Twins president Dave St. Peter said in October. “The distribution has been there, and frankly, the fan feedback has been really positive. We felt like clarity for our fans was the most important thing that we could bring heading into 2025, realizing the uncertainty that we’ve been dealing with, really, since Opening Day of ‘23.”
Brewers, Reds decision to move back to FanDuel Sports Network creates questions for Twins
There are a few things that could play into the Brewers and Reds decision to go back to DSG. The company filed for bankruptcy in March 2023 but has since gained financial backing from Amazon and emerged with a new name – Main Street Sports Group.
The restructuring also rebranded the Bally’s channels as FanDuel Sports Network and partnered with Amazon to stream games on Amazon Prime Video, although both teams have pointed toward the FDSN app as the main way to stream games next season and both will have the blackout restrictions that Twins fans have groaned about for the past three years.
With a guaranteed check for broadcast rights compared to MLB’s subscription-based revenue model, the Reds and the Brewers may have decided it was better to take the money than find out what was behind the secret door. But it also has other differences to the Twins situation.
One of the aspects that the Reds and Brewers had in their agreements with MSSG was a direct-to-consumer streaming option – something the Twins didn’t have in their previous agreement. The Twins also have an added public relations element to their decision after the team slashed payroll after the 2023 season and has used an iron fist to make sure the number stays around $130 million next year.
There is no sense that the Twins are willing to reverse course on their broadcast rights but you could have said the same thing about the Reds and the Brewers last month. Until the Twins’ MLB channel is up and running, it’s something to consider and could extend the broadcast nightmare fans have been dealing with for years.