Mariners’ TV future: Reporter shares more of what he knows

Nov 26, 2024, 12:44 PM

Seattle Mariners general win handshake...

Seattle Mariners players celebrate a win over the New York Yankees on Sept. 19, 2024. (Stephen Brashear/Getty Images)

(Stephen Brashear/Getty Images)

Editor, Seattle Sports

The Seattle Mariners’ TV situation garnered attention last week when The Athletic senior writer Evan Drellich made mention of it in a larger report about the overall MLB media rights plan for the future.

Drellich reported the Mariners will turn to MLB Media to run the production of their ROOT Sports television broadcasts, but there’s a lot less settled for Seattle compared to the seven other teams under MLB’s broadcasting umbrella.

“It’s just complicated because they have distribution agreements that ran longer,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said of the Mariners, per Drellich’s article. “We’ll do the production for them, not clear how much more.”

Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy caught up with Drellich on Friday to get more insight on what this all means for the Mariners, and that included the veteran reporter sharing a bit more context from his conversation with Manfred.

“There was another quote Rob gave me that I didn’t use (in the article), which was basically the Mariners are on the road to becoming an MLB Media team, there’s just a lot of long-term commitments to work through,” Drellich said. “… At some point, when exactly that is I don’t know, it sounds like the Mariners will just fully be broadcast by MLB Media, which would in effect, I assume, be basically just a rebranding of ROOT – but I’m not positive on that. But they are on the road to becoming a full MLB Media team, and for now, MLB is handling the back end (of Mariners TV broadcasts on ROOT).”

There may not be much known when it comes to timing, but Drellich is pretty confident about what the end game is for the Mariners – and it’s good news for fans who have been clamoring for a way to stream games in-market without subscribing to a cable or satellite package.

Seattle Sports host Stacy Rost asked Drellich if moving to MLB Media means the Mariners will eventually have a direct-to-consumer streaming option.

“Yeah, that is the benefit to going to MLB,” he responded. “… If the Mariners fully become an MLB Media team, they will be available direct-to-consumer, meaning you can pay either a monthly fee or a season-long fee to watch Mariners games in-market. You don’t have to have a cable or satellite package, you just have to have the internet connection or the phone that can access it. So that’s a plus. Every MLB Media team is available direct-to-consumer. And some teams that are outside of MLB (Media) are, but not all of them.”

As things stand, fans can subscribe to MLB.TV and stream every game live – except for any teams that are considered to be in the viewer’s market. It appears MLB aims to move past those unpopular local streaming blackouts.

“It’s a positive for fans to have more options to be able to watch games in-market,” Drellich said. “… It’s really overdue. It shouldn’t be so hard to watch games.”

MLB’s TV plan would be good for Seattle Mariners

The main focus of Drellich’s report for The Athletic last week was the league’s plan to get as many of the its 30 teams under the MLB Media umbrella in order to sell large-scale streaming rights deals, similar to what the NBA did this summer.

“If they end up selling multiple national streaming packages – well, let’s just throw out an example: if they sell one to Amazon on Prime Video, if they sell one to NBC, well, you’ve got to sign up for NBC (Peacock), you have to sign up for Amazon. And we don’t know exactly what those subscription models look like,” Drellich said. “But the money in it would be the real appeal for the owners, right? The NBA this summer got about $77 billion in deals over the life of three different deals. That’s huge money, and if baseball can get some of that, they’d love it.

“There’s going to be a cost to fans at some point here, but the trade off, the positive might be that you’re not going to have as hard a time if you’re in-market and want to watch the game. So if you’re in Seattle, you don’t have cable but MLB has this package on Amazon, well, if you sign up for Prime Video then you should be able to watch ‘X’ number of of Mariners games. But, you know, we’ve got to see exactly what the setup looks like.”

This kind of future may not be great news for every MLB team, but Drellich said it would be for Seattle.

“Come 2028, MLB’s national deals expire. … What Rob wants to do is take control of local TV rights and sell some of them in national packages,” Drellich said. “… The teams that are going to be kind of most put out by this, potentially, are the largest market teams: Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, Red Sox – anybody whose TV rights are worth a lot of money. And so probably the Mariners are among a group of teams that would actually be helped by this. Most small and mid-sized market teams would likely benefit.

“The issue is going to be can Rob Manfred get to a place where all the teams are participating, and he’s going to have to convince the big market teams that it’s worth their while. And then if they have some holdouts and some teams don’t want to do it, do we see streaming packages that include, I don’t know, 27 of 30 teams? What do they end up doing? Can they get to a place where all 30 participate is the big question.”

The big market teams aren’t the only possible hurdle. Drellich pointed out how Manfred’s plan would have an impact on revenue sharing, which is a key part of the collective bargaining agreement with the MLB Players Association. That could spell a holdout when the next CBA after the 2026 season.

“The system would require a change to revenue sharing in the sport. Revenue sharing is a collectively-bargained item – that means the players get a say in it. So once Rob gets done with the owners, he’s got to deal with the players. So this is a big deal, it’s a real sea change, and it’s an open question how much he can get done,” Drellich said. “… The TV stuff is going to get louder and louder going into 2026 (because) 2026 is the final deal with the collective bargaining agreement. And so if there’s a lockout … it’s all going to be because of this. It’s all going to be about the revenue sharing questions.”

Listen to the full Bump and Stacy conversation with Evan Drellich of The Athletic in the podcast at this link or in the player near the top of this post. Catch Bump and Stacy from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays on Seattle Sports.