MLB owner calls RSN demise a 'slow-moving trainwreck'
Seven days away from a major court date that will determine the fate of Diamond Sports Network, the national regional sports network conglomerate added a new team for 2025.
The St. Louis Cardinals announced Thursday they have struck a multi-year deal with Diamond (which recently rebranded its RSNs as the "FanDuel Sports Network") to continue as their exclusive broadcast partner.
On the surface, it's a very fan-friendly deal. Not only does the continuity of the Cardinals' home network make finding games less confusing for cable subscribers in the region, non-subscribers are no longer relegated to using a VPN to stream games in 2025.
Under the surface is where things get interesting. Additional reporting from Katie Woo and Evan Drellich of The Athletic reveal the much broader picture of Diamond's contractual obligations — and it's far less rosy than the initial press release suggested.
According to The Athletic, the Cardinals' contract with Diamond:
• Does not extend beyond this decade, and provides “optionality” if the sports media landscape changes.
• Appears to be short enough that the Cardinals could weigh joining a national, in-market streaming package overseen by MLB without much delay, if any.
• Comes with a 25 percent pay reduction for 2025 compared to the previous contract, though DeWitt said "elements" of the contract make it "a little bit more complex" than that.
To be clear, this isn't a long-term commitment to revive the old RSN model in a sports-crazy market. It's a short-term deal, a bridge to baseball's future in which cord-cutters are the target audience. And it could be typical of the kind of contracts the former Bally Sports-affiliated free agents (the Angels, Reds, Tigers, Royals and Rays) are presently negotiating.
“I think that probably was a shock to some people that that bankruptcy hearing revealed that (Diamond) were ready to just basically drop everybody but the Braves if they couldn’t reset the economics,” Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III told The Athletic. “And that was actually not a surprise to us, because we’ve been seeing this slow-moving trainwreck for a long time, probably a few years actually."
MLB’s national TV deals with ESPN, FOX and Turner run through 2028. The details of the Cardinals' deal with Diamond suggest there could be a radical reshaping of the baseball media landscape in four years. What could that look like?
"What I'd like to see happen over time is, we do our national deals, that we convert some of that local inventory into national inventory. It increases our reach and at the same time, when you think about it, we own the out-of-market rights already, if we control local rights as well, we can sell anything anywhere," Manfred said, according to Awful Announcing. "You don't have to just sell in your market. And I'd like to get into a mode, where if it's not in a national package, the consumer has the ability to go in, buy what he wants to watch, wherever he is, and we get rid of that really questionable business concept of the blackout, meaning not letting people who want to watch, watch."
All trainwrecks come to a crashing halt at some point. After the particulars of Diamond's reorganization plan are finalized for the short term, expect a bang.
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