{"id":576217,"date":"2026-02-16T21:29:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T21:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/576217\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T21:29:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T21:29:21","slug":"marquee-the-smartest-thing-weve-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/576217\/","title":{"rendered":"Marquee ‘the smartest thing we’ve done’"},"content":{"rendered":"

MESA, Ariz. \u2014 The local TV broadcast landscape in Major League Baseball is a growing problem.<\/p>\n

Beyond the looming labor strife<\/a>, the regional sports network (RSN) model has been floundering for many teams. Nearly half of the teams\u2019 game broadcasts will be produced by MLB for the 2026 season after nine more came under its purview during the offseason following missed RSN payments from the previous providers.<\/p>\n

The Chicago Cubs have largely avoided a significant financial impact in the shift from the traditional RSN setup to more direct-to-consumer options that other MLB franchises have endured the last couple of seasons. The economic environment clearly has become volatile on the TV side, though, and it\u2019s an issue that won\u2019t be going away.<\/p>\n

Photos: An inside look at Chicago Cubs spring training<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at baseball right now, there\u2019s a lot of really nice tailwinds: attendance is up, ratings are up, there\u2019s a lot of things going the right direction,\u201d Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts said Monday. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of good young stars and exciting young players, and that\u2019s all going well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some challenges. I mean, the regional sports network model has been under pressure for the last few years. Certain teams felt it the most this offseason and it\u2019ll take a while for it to work out, but it\u2019s certainly a challenge for the entire league.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking back at the Cubs\u2019 decision to launch Marquee Sports Network in 2020, Ricketts said he wouldn\u2019t do anything differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven all the market headwinds for RSNs, I think Marquee is one of the best things we ever did,\u201d he said. \u201cTo be in control of our own destiny and be able to produce the games we want to produce the way we want to produce them, with the right people and the right staff and the right level of production quality, for us it\u2019s been a huge home run. It\u2019s been able to give us a chance to control our own destiny for a while and has been maybe the smartest thing we\u2019ve done in all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the Cubs so far have avoided the RSN limbo other teams are dealing with, they haven\u2019t escaped the economic realities of the traditional TV business model. Marquee laid off multiple employees<\/a> in December, most notably in the digital content departments, and essentially shuttered its website, which included the elimination of written coverage of the Cubs and Bears.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very happy with the product, everyone is,\u201d Ricketts said. \u201cWe\u2019ve won tons of Emmys and we get great feedback. We have broadcasters who are loved by the fans and we do a great game-day production, but we also have the economic realities that are facing other sports networks and the declining revenue model.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we just have to balance that out and try to focus our efforts where we can. Get a great experience and a great production for fans and just being mindful of expenses because it\u2019s getting tougher.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ricketts acknowledged the speculation that MLB could try to put all RSNs together under league distribution, but he didn\u2019t want to delve too deeply into the topic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe love the network and we love our independence,\u201d Ricketts said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MESA, Ariz. \u2014 The local TV broadcast landscape in Major League Baseball is a growing problem. Beyond the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,138,24,4245,161,61266,1897,4,19639,14192,151,6550],"class_list":["post-576217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-cubs","tag-baseball","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-chicagocubs","tag-cubs","tag-direct-to-consumer","tag-marquee-sports-network","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-tv","tag-regional-sports-network","tag-spring-training","tag-tom-ricketts"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116082440065005305","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}