Baseball Is Back, What To Look For At The Upfronts And Newfronts

1. Baseball Is Back

Major League Baseball’s 2023 season kicked off this week with some new rules designed to make the game faster and less boring. 

There will be the equivalent of the NBA’s shot clock for pitchers. Bigger bases. And new rules about where fielders need to stand. 

But the biggest change of all is that many MLB games will now be carried on subscription streaming apps (bankrupt RSNs be damned) giving fans a far more compelling reason to cut the cord.

Why It Matters

The YES Network, which serves Nets and Yankees fans in the New York market is the latest RSN (Regional Sports Network) to launch a streaming app. YES will be available at an intro rate of $19.99/month (it goes up to $24.99 at some point.) 

And while the app seems to be having more than its fair share of Opening Day issues (fans are struggling to log in via the Roku and Fire TV apps) this too shall likely pass, and fans in the biggest market in the country will no longer need a cable subscription to watch baseball or basketball.  (Well half of them anyway. Knicks and Mets fans will have to wait until MSG launches its own promised streaming app.)

YES joins all of the Ballys apps, the New England Sports Network app and the LA Clippers “Clippervision” app as relatively low-cost ways for fans to keep up with their favorite teams without having to pay three or four times as much for a cable or vMVPD subscription.

It’s still up in the air whether all these apps will succeed as they are, whether the leagues will need to/want to take them over and the timeframe on all that, but assume that at some point in the next three years someone will figure them out.

Which brings me to the bigger point about the effect this will have on TV in general and sports in particular.

A. Carriage Fees And Salaries Come Down

For years, RSNs were able to use the fact that they were a big selling point for cable companies to force them to (a) pay extremely high carriage fees (the money the cable company pay to carry the RSN, hence the name) and to (b) include the RSN in all of their bundles, even the lower-priced “Bronze” ones.

Since the MVPDs sure as hell weren’t going to pay those carriage fees themselves, the costs were passed on to consumers who seemed to take high cable bills in stride.

But that era seems to be drawing to a close as several factors come into play.

First off, the slow but steady rise in cord cutting—which is likely to be accelerated by the fact that fans no longer need a cable subscription to watch their RSN— means that those carriage fees are shrinking and that cuts into the amount of money the teams have. Sports rights deals in general are widely assumed to be coming down from the high struck by the NFL and that in turn affects things like salaries—the major sports leagues were able to pay their players untold millions each year largely thanks to the money they got from TV.

B. Streaming Can Ideally Draw In A Younger Generation Of Fans

All of the major sports leagues skew older—MLB, NFL and NHL skew 50 and up, and the NBA is well over 40.

They’re going to need to draw in younger fans and streaming is a great way to do that. While the lack of a cable subscription seems to be the main thing that keeps younger fans away, apps can draw them in with easy-to-implement extras like live stats, multiple camera angles, fantasy league tie-ins, gambling and other features that take advantage of the digital nature of streaming.

The apps can also help bring younger fans back to the stadium, with discounts on tickets and VIP privileges and experiences inside the arena. 

C. It May Be Time For Shorter Seasons

New rules aside, baseball, with its 162 regular season games, has an attention problem. In addition to the time commitment, there’s the fact that fans can easily follow the game online and decide whether to tune in for the last inning or two if the game is close. Given that most games clock in at around two hours or more, the solution may just be to shorten the season.

Hockey, baseball and basketball are all competing with the specter of the NFL and its 17-game season and while there are many reasons football season is shorter (injuries!) it would seem that cutting the number of games in half would benefit all three leagues and help to make their playoff season more of a climax than a “this is the part when you need to start paying attention” scenario.

What You Need To Do About It

If you are an MLB team and you have not thought through your streaming strategy, time to get on the stick. While cable deals do help line your coffers, they’re not going to be around forever and you need to think about what’s next.

If you’re MLB, the NBA and the NHL, you’ll need to figure out what makes the most sense for you—owning the apps yourself, letting the teams own them or letting a third party handle them. 

If you are one of the companies standing up a streaming app, make sure you have your tech in order before you launch. Consumers are becoming much less forgiving of 2019 style snafus. (Looking at you YES Network.)

If you are an up and coming player in one of those leagues, could be time to buy a slightly smaller mansion— as TV deals get smaller, salaries are likely to have reached their peak.

2. What To Look For In The Upfronts and Newfronts

Rather than spin up a relatively minor news story, today’s second feature will be all about what to look for during this year’s Upfronts and Newfronts, which, in addition to all the attendant hoopla, is an excellent way to figure out where the industry is heading in the year ahead.

While the line between the two is increasingly blurry and the digital video purveyors the Newfronts were designed for have now been relegated to footnote/”are they still around?” status, there is still much that can be gleaned.

Here’s our list of what to look for.

Originals: This is, after all, what the Upfronts were about—the upcoming fall season. Look to see what the streaming services are doing about originals, whether they’re adding more news and sports related shows and who their originals are designed to appeal to—a mass audience or an “HBO-like” one?

Similarly, look to see what the broadcast and cable networks are rolling out—are there more sitcoms, procedurals and reality/competition shows or are they trying their hands at the sort of prestige dramas that do so well on streaming?

Netflix: What does a Netflix upfront look like? (This is their first one.) Is it similar to Disney+ and HBO Max? Is the underlying message “hey, we’re the new prime time”? Are they rolling out any ad formats that are unique to digital? What’s the reaction from industry types?

The FASTs: Everyone knows the FASTs are hot, but that’s about it—there’s a whole lot of education to do, right down to the fact that the various FAST services do not, in fact, carry the same exact “FAST channels” but rather, curate their own linear channels and on-demand libraries. (And that’s before you get to the part where some people use “FAST Channel” to refer to services like Pluto TV and WatchFree+ and others use it to refer to the linear channels on said services.) 

Here, we’ll be watching what they’re showing off—shows, ad formats, audiences, UX? The goal here is to make advertisers feel comfortable shifting bigger chunks of their budgets by convincing them that FASTs are the new cable. Will they accomplish that?

The After-Buzz: Upfront/Newfront season is only slightly shorter than the NBA Playoffs. So wait until the end of May to get a better sense of what the industry sees as the key takeaways from this year and how that’s going to impact what everyone else is up to for the rest of the year. 

One key part of the after-buzz will be budgets: were brands spending more, less or the same this year and why? Are they still worried about the economy? Unsure where the industry is headed? A little bit of both? 

There will be much commentary on that in the months ahead, from others and from us, so stay tuned.