Zulgad: Blackouts no more: Everything you could possibly want to know about Twins' new TV venture with MLB
Team finally will have a direct-to-consumer streaming option, but also should be available on cable and satellite in 2025. Also, who will be back in the booth, what this means for revenue and more.
The Minnesota Twins brought an end to their months-long public relations losing streak on Tuesday with a grand slam announcement about their TV future.
Bally Sports North, owned by the bankrupt Diamond Sports Group, is out and Major League Baseball is in to produce and distribute Twins games locally beginning with the 2025 season. The most important thing: the Twins will provide a direct-to-consumer streaming option that will make games available to everyone who wants to see (and pay) for them. You no longer will have to subscribe to cable or satellite to watch the team.
MLB’s local-media division will negotiate for cable and satellite distribution agreements, meaning those who want to watch the Twins on cable systems, such as Comcast or Charter, or have on satellite should have the games available on their service. The price of this will be determined once deals are reached, but the three teams MLB produced this season (Arizona, Colorado and San Diego) made their games available via streaming in the local markets for $99.99 per season, or $19.99 a month, with no blackouts.
What does the lifting of the blackouts mean? According to MLB’s release announcing the news, the Twins will go from reaching approximately 1.08 million homes in 2024 to approximately 4.40 million homes in 2025. That’s an increase of 307 percent.
The Twins appeared to be moving in this direction last winter — Cory Provus discussed it on a call he did after it was announced he would be moving from radio to television — but the plan fell through and it was announced in February the Twins would return to Bally Sports North on a one-year contract.
That, along with owner Joe Pohlad announcing what ended up being about $30 million payroll reduction in the offseason, took the Twins from a feel-good story of having ended an 18-game, 19-year playoff losing streak to a club that many felt didn’t care about connecting with its fans. The Twins cut payroll in large part because the $54.8 million they had gotten from Diamond Sports Group in the last season of a multi-year contract in 2023 also took a hit as the team signed on to receive an undisclosed but lesser rights fee in 2024.
This time there was no long wait to see if the Twins would return to Bally. “Clarity for our fans was the most important thing,” Twins president Dave St. Peter said. “We wanted to move sooner rather than later.”
Let’s address some of the other questions that might arise from Tuesday’s announcement:
How will this impact the Twins’ payroll? It was reported at the end of the season that the Twins were not going to further reduce their player payroll for 2025. St. Paul said that the Twins will get no rights-fee or guarantees on money from television with this deal — Diamond wrote the team a check — but that doesn’t mean there won’t be income with subscriptions and advertising sales. “There will be a reduction in local media revenues coming to the Twins in 2025,” St. Peter said. “But over time economics and viewership should increase. … I don’t think today’s announcement has any impact on payroll.”
No rights-fee doesn’t mean no income: While there figures to be some type of split with MLB on both costs and income for this venture, the direct-to-consumer model does mean money can be made. Potentially, a lot of it. Commissioner Rob Manfred said this summer that the Padres were approaching 40,000 digital subscribers, meaning about $4 million in income given the pricing.
Will the announcers change? Provus and lead analyst Justin Morneau will return, according to St. Peter, but it’s not decided who else will be back. The Twins have had a rotating cast of analysts in recent years, using former players LaTroy Hawkins, Glen Perkins, Trevor Plouffe, Denard Spain and Roy Smalley. Bally Sports North ran the pregame and postgame shows with Audra Martin, Katie Storm and Anthony LaPanta serving as the primary hosts and Tim Laudner as the main analyst. Martin often traveled with the team and provided reports from field level. It sounds as if the Twins still plan to have a pre- and postgame presence but it wouldn’t be surprising if they don’t use Bally Sports North employees. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t hire a few of them away.
Is this Victory Sports II? Those who remember the Twins’ attempt to start the Victory Sports Network in 2004, know that venture ended up being a disaster and the team quickly returned to Fox Sports North. This is not that. Not even close. First of all, 2004 is 100 years ago when talking about media and, second, this venture will not be a 24-hour regional sports network. It will be a streaming service, or channel, that carries Twins games, maybe some other Twins programming, such as replays of games, and nothing more. In 2004, a team that wanted to have its own network, had to find programming for it. Now, all you need to do is show the games and then call it a night.
Could the Twins end up with some games on over-the-air (free) TV? Yes. St. Peter said that’s not “currently anticipated,” but there will be “further conversations.” I’d expect that if this does happen, we might be talking about one game a weekend on a station such as KSTC (Ch. 45) or FOX9+. That’s a total guess, but it would definitely be a goodwill gesture to make a few games available at no cost. Those games also almost certainly would be streamed.
Does this mean national games shown by FOX or AppleTV+ would be streamed by the Twins? No. In that case, blackout rules will apply. Last season, the Twins had 151 games on BSN, meaning only 11 had to be watched elsewhere.
So are all blackouts lifted? If you are in what MLB considers the Twins’ television territory, the answer is yes. For instance, there are counties in Iowa, South Dakota and Wisconsin that fall into the Twins’ TV territory and fans in those areas will be able to stream games by purchasing the Twins’ direct-to-consumer package. North Dakota residents also will be able to subscribe.
What are these productions like? This is straight from the press release: Local games produced by MLB last year included special features normally associated with nationally televised games including Ump Cam, live look-ins to the MLB Replay Operations Center, Wire Cam, on-field locations for pregame and postgame, a new right field camera with a shallow depth-of-field look, and increased access, such as in-game interviews with players.
Does this impact the Wild or Timberwolves? Nope. Both will be back on Bally Sports North this season, and both have an agreement with their television partner that provides the ability to purchase a direct-to-consumer streaming option through Bally. I know there were some complaints about how that worked last year but that’s another story. The thing to remember is that Diamond remains in bankruptcy. The NHL and NBA did reach a deal with Diamond last month that should keep the Wolves and Wild on Bally Sports North for this season. Both teams will take a reduced rights fee from Diamond, and both almost certainly have contingency plans for 2024-25, if Diamond doesn’t make it to the finish line.
Where are you located?
You will now have to have one subscription for the Twins and another for the MLB package, assuming you are inside the Twins viewing area.