Bally is toast

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AWvsCBsteeeerike3
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Re: Bally is toast

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

go birds wrote:
January 30 23, 8:43 am
AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:
January 28 23, 8:57 am
mikechamp wrote:
January 27 23, 5:58 pm
go birds wrote:
January 27 23, 12:08 pm
i hate the idea of streaming sports in general so this sucks.

the feed is behind and there's a good chance of buffering--never fails. It's cool to have the access when on the go and watch on an iPad or something, but I'm usually trying to watch on my big screen at home and there's 100% chance the feed will be interrupted at some point.

first world problems i know, but the future of watching live sports is not looking good (see NFL Sunday ticket).
I'm with you on this. Unless the feed is strong/consistent, the buffering is maddening. It might drive me back to radio and just watching highlights on my phone in the middle of the night when it won't buffer because traffic is low.
Okay, old men yelling at clouds.

No one is forcing you to stream or taking away cable.
MLB Extra Innings, a couple years back, incorporated the MLB.TV feed via the channel lineup on comcast and directv. It was a weird setup, but it worked almost as good as old Extra Innings with little issue.

however with Bally going into the [expletive] (who could have possibly seen this bubble popping?!), there will be a streaming company that will buy the rights and there will be all kinds of bells and whistles like homerun probability on a 1-1 count while the announcer casually talks about WRC+ while a betting ad scrolls on the bottom ribbon and while all that is ok, you won't even be able to watch the game uninterrupted because it will be lagging behind and/or buffering.

That's 100% going to happen.

Its about to happen with the NFL since they are going to youtubetv.

so, yes, my hand will be forced here
Couple questions about that though.

First, the out of market stuff isn't changing necessarily, right? Ballys has the rights (both cable subscription and streaming) in the blackout areas. They're in bankruptcy but can still operate. Whoever owns the rights to out of market still owns the rights to the out of market (presumably MLB but I have no idea). I've heard Ballys is looking at doing their own streaming or partnering with someone to provide streaming. In either case, they only own the rights in the areas already determined. It's highly unlikely they, while in bankruptcy, also purchase the rights to out of market games.

Given that, I only see a couple ways this plays out in order of decreasing probability:
1. Ballys continues operating their traditional cable package/broadcasts that are already in place and partner with a streaming service ala Disney/Apple/Amazon/YouTube. The partner uses their infrastructure to stream the games for a fee and the fee is divided amongst the service and Ballys. Blackout rules remain in place. No change to out of market subscribers.
2. Ballys continues operating their traditional cable package/broadcasts that are already in place and sells the digital rights to all or a majority of blackout areas to whoever holds the out of market rights currently. I don't see how this would impact out of market subscribers.
3. Ballys continues operating their traditional cable package/broadcasts that are already in place and sells digital subscriptions themselves. Blackout rules remain in place. No change to out of market subscribers.
4. Ballys folds and all rights revert to MLB/teams and it's on them to figure out the mess...this would kind of be the Armageddon scenario, especially if it happens later in the offseason. In this case, mlb/teams would have to figure out how to broadcast games or an existing streaming service would need to come in and do it.

I'm far from an expert here, and this ignores ownership stakes in Ballys and all sorts of nuances. But, from a user perspective, I don't see many other ways this plays out.

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Re: Bally is toast

Post by tlombard »

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:
January 31 23, 7:36 am
tlombard wrote:
January 30 23, 9:07 pm
I finally found a way around the blackout with the MLB package on YouTube TV towards the end of the season last year. I don't know why it took me so long to figure out.

Basically during the season I set my home area to somewhere that I can be sure I'm going to pass through every couple of months so that I can login from there on my phone and keep it up to date. Last year I did that in a town in Texas so that the only games I was blacked out for were American League teams that the Cards aren't playing very often anyway. Then I just had to update my TV to the location of my phone and as long as I don't refresh that location on my TV, it never gets changed and I can watch from anywhere on the road. Eventually I had a friend that I let use a family account for give me his sign on information and I set his home area to Cheyenne, Wyoming since I was sitting there waiting to get a DOT inspection done on a trailer before I could get my next load and it worked great for him.

The only downside is that I get all the local channels for the area that I set it to and that meant that I got channels in Texas. During campaign season. Their political ads are just insane. I have never been so happy for an election to be over. I want to use somewhere different this year but Texas is the one area that I know I'm going to get through regularly enough to keep it up to date since I head back to Dallas every five or six weeks when I finish up a trainee so that I can take them back to the yard, spend a day or two relaxing and then get back on the road with another new driver.
This is both hilarious and depressing.

Look at the lengths people are going to to avoid the stupid blackout rules. And, that's for a paid subscription.

A much easier way is to just pirate it.
For me, it's actually a lot easier to do it the way I am but I'm in a unique situation where I literally drive back and forth across the country for 3-4 months at a time and take the same basic routes pretty regularly. I can basically set it and forget it, only needing to remember to pull it up on my phone for a couple of seconds any time I roll through Texas since I have to log in from my "home area" every 90 days or else I lose access to stuff.

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NDark
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Re: Bally is toast

Post by NDark »

MLB preparing to take over broadcasts.

Getting the feeling more and more this is going to result in the status quo as far as blackouts and access go.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/356 ... atform=amp

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sighyoung
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Re: Bally is toast

Post by sighyoung »

Image

As Bally is toast, we're now shifting to MLB as Powdered Toast Man. Good luck with this.

Spider John
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Re: Bally is toast

Post by Spider John »

I don't believe MLB taking over anything is a good thing.

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Big Amoco Sign
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Re: Bally is toast

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NDark
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Re: Bally is toast

Post by NDark »

So if I am understanding this correctly, MLB is staffing up their own media group with people from the bankrupt media group included the bankrupt companies old CFO? Genius.

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GeddyWrox
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Re: Bally is toast

Post by GeddyWrox »

I heard a guest on 101 ESPN a few weeks ago that had been following all this from a legal standpoint for a while. Apparently, Bally's does still bring in a lot of revenue. The big issue is that Sinclair had to take out a massive loan to buy the RSNs from Fox. Between COVID and all the cord cutting, the revenue just hasn't been enough to cover the debt payments.

SOOO, if Bally declares bankruptcy, and that debt is restructured, and then some entity (like MLB) can swoop in and grab it without all that debt, it might just still be profitable.

The problem here is that it's Manfred and MLB, and they'll fvck it up, one way or another.

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ghostrunner
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Re: Bally is toast

Post by ghostrunner »

I think MLB tv is actually a good product and this all sounds pretty good to me. They have streaming hiccups, but so do most streaming services I use. But the interface and the basic offering are fine. Also happy it's being pulled away from a gambling company. No issues with gambling per se, but I recall reading about some things Bally wanted to do in terms of tying broadcasts to sports betting and didn't like the sound of that.

It seems like it should make it easier to deal with blackouts, whether or not they actually do.

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CardsofSTL
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Re: Bally is toast

Post by CardsofSTL »

MLB files emergency motion that could lead to changes for how games are streamed

Major League Baseball is moving aggressively to gain control of broadcast rights for some teams.

Diamond missed rights fees payments to the Twins and Guardians, the Athletic reported, and MLB filed an emergency motion Wednesday that would make Diamond either pay the teams or terminate the contracts so the teams could take over the broadcasts.

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