It’s Almost Baseball Season. Some Teams Are Still Hunting for a TV Home.
February 3, 2026
It’s Almost Baseball Season. Some Teams Are Still Hunting for a TV Home.
8 comments
By opening day, MLB’s in-house production and distribution division could be handling local coverage for half of the league’s 30 franchises. Less than three years ago, all of them had deals with regional sports networks, demonstrating just how quickly the sport’s economic landscape is changing.
It should just be on a channel you shouldn’t have to subscribe to anything
BACK IN MY DAY WE-
Utterly overjoyed that the Rays are no longer on FanDuel and their Idiocracy-style ads whenever anyone got a hit.
Put the Braves back on TBS.
How will this play into CBA negotiations?
It will always amaze me that MLB doesn’t just own all the broadcast rights à la the NFL and run it as a real streaming network.
So local games free in market on the MLB app.
A localized ad network for direct buys that can be backfilled with affiliate ads using a third party ad network.
It’s such an awful cash grab that one has to pay for MLB.tv for their own in market games OR pay for cable just to have viewing access AND get commercials.
We were pretty blessed for many years in my life when Yankees games were primarily on OTA WPIX 11 and the Mets fans had OTA on WWOR 9 in New York.
It is ridiculous this is a problem. I try not to be a doomer but baseball can and *will* die if it’s not easily accessible for people to watch regionally. Especially kids. Every game a kid misses with their moms/dads, the less in love with the game they will be. I’m really starting to wonder if the MLB even realizes its consumer base should be LARGELY kid oriented. Creates life long fan, grows the game.
I don’t watch baseball for the most part, anymore, because doing so is a chore. I’m not going to pay $20+/month to be able to do so.
This means my daughter also doesn’t watch baseball, and therefore will have no attachment to the game.
Because that is what the MLB seems to want. So be it.
8 comments
By opening day, MLB’s in-house production and distribution division could be handling local coverage for half of the league’s 30 franchises. Less than three years ago, all of them had deals with regional sports networks, demonstrating just how quickly the sport’s economic landscape is changing.
[https://www.wsj.com/sports/baseball/its-almost-baseball-season-some-teams-are-still-hunting-for-a-tv-home-591ca4a0?st=gN2r2F&mod=wsjreddit](https://www.wsj.com/sports/baseball/its-almost-baseball-season-some-teams-are-still-hunting-for-a-tv-home-591ca4a0?st=gN2r2F&mod=wsjreddit)
It should just be on a channel you shouldn’t have to subscribe to anything
BACK IN MY DAY WE-
Utterly overjoyed that the Rays are no longer on FanDuel and their Idiocracy-style ads whenever anyone got a hit.
Put the Braves back on TBS.
How will this play into CBA negotiations?
It will always amaze me that MLB doesn’t just own all the broadcast rights à la the NFL and run it as a real streaming network.
So local games free in market on the MLB app.
A localized ad network for direct buys that can be backfilled with affiliate ads using a third party ad network.
It’s such an awful cash grab that one has to pay for MLB.tv for their own in market games OR pay for cable just to have viewing access AND get commercials.
We were pretty blessed for many years in my life when Yankees games were primarily on OTA WPIX 11 and the Mets fans had OTA on WWOR 9 in New York.
It is ridiculous this is a problem. I try not to be a doomer but baseball can and *will* die if it’s not easily accessible for people to watch regionally. Especially kids. Every game a kid misses with their moms/dads, the less in love with the game they will be. I’m really starting to wonder if the MLB even realizes its consumer base should be LARGELY kid oriented. Creates life long fan, grows the game.
I don’t watch baseball for the most part, anymore, because doing so is a chore. I’m not going to pay $20+/month to be able to do so.
This means my daughter also doesn’t watch baseball, and therefore will have no attachment to the game.
Because that is what the MLB seems to want. So be it.