The World Series On Netflix, Apple TV+, YouTube or Amazon Prime Video? That's the future
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'Game 7' remains the two best words in sports, so you tell your friends to swing by your crib before first pitch. Given the reach of the broadcaster, Game 7 of the 2032 World Series should have a big tune-in from around the globe. Your friends have arrived. Time to turn on Netflix. Or maybe it's Amazon Prime Video, YouTube or Apple TV +.
'As a baseball person, I'm not ready to emotionally cross that bridge yet,' said Blue Jays announcer Dan Shulman, when told of this futuristic scenario of the World Series on a streaming platform. 'I'm 58 years old and I would say I'm average in technology. Sometimes I can find stuff, sometimes I gotta call my son and say, how can I get the Maple Leafs game tonight and he tells me. There are a lot of people watching the World Series who are a little bit older than me who are not as comfortable with technology. But I totally get it. We're on our way to being dinosaurs. I'm just not ready to go through that portal yet for the World Series.'
'It would be tragic, not right, incorrect,' said Dave Sims, the 72-year-old Yankees radio play-by-play broadcaster, when told of the same scenario. 'I mean, I grew up hearing the Gillette theme song and Mel Allen saying, 'This is Mel Allen, and welcome to the World Series.' If it's still going to be one of the great pastimes in the country, you can't hold a gun to someone's head and make them pay. I hope it doesn't happen. I mean, I can see it happening, but I hope not.'
This column is a thought experiment, but it's a thought experiment that seems destined to happen.
Streaming reached a historic milestone in May, as its share of total television usage outpaced the combined share of broadcast and cable for the first time, according to Nielsen. Then, in June, broadcast dipped below 20 percent of TV viewership for the first time — less than YouTube and Netflix's combined viewership (see chart below). Just look among your own sports community. How many people do you know who pay for a streaming service to watch sports? Bet it's a lot.
Once upon a time, the thought of a major sports championship airing on cable seemed preposterous. And yet:
So the World Series on streaming? The industry experts I spoke with think it's inevitable.
'Will it happen in the next five years? No. Would it be in the next 15 years? Quite possibly yes. We shouldn't assume that somehow being on traditional broadcast television means that everyone has access,' said Ed Desser, a former NBA executive who now runs his own consultancy, Desser Sports Media. 'Because that is increasingly not the case. In 10 or 15 years, it will probably be even less the case.'
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The World Series rights have been held exclusively by Fox Sports since 2000, a long-running partnership that included an extension in 2018 that extended the Fox-MLB partnership to 2028. (MLB also has a national deal with Turner Sports that will expire in 2028. Last February, as reported by The Athletic's Evan Drellich and Andrew Marchand, ESPN opted out of the final three seasons of its $550 million contract that gave it the right to broadcast 'Sunday Night Baseball,' the Home Run Derby and playoff games, though Marchand reported last month that representatives from MLB and ESPN have renewed talks to keep the sports network involved in some form.)
Fox pays an average annual fee of $729 million for its current package of MLB games, which includes the All-Star Game, playoffs and the World Series. Top Fox executives have said publicly that MLB remains an important content tentpole and that the company will access MLB inventory in the event of an ESPN-MLB breakup. As Drellich has written extensively, MLB is aiming to create national packages for major streaming companies to bid on come 2028.
The reality of the marketplace is that if the World Series was moved off free-to-air TV in the U.S. and moved exclusively onto a streaming platform, whether that is 2028 or a couple of years afterward, MLB would be sitting on a financial gold mine. The inaugural move of rights from linear to digital has historically resulted in a significant additional value beyond rights merely moving from one linear package to another linear package. Sports leagues have calculated that fans will get over any initial resistance and anger from the move.
'We're not just talking about a pedestrian set of Tier 1 rights here — this is the culminating round of our national pastime and would represent the first time the 'Finals' of one of the Big 4 U.S. sports moves exclusively off (network or cable) television, which is much bigger deal than, say, a digital simulcast of the Super Bowl or the recent simulcast of the Stanley Cup by WBD,' said William Mao, the Senior VP of Octagon's Global Media Rights Consulting division, who advises rightsholders, distribution platforms and technology companies within the sports broadcast space. 'Take these imperfect reference points: Consider the multiple in value the MLS saw from its Apple deal (moving from Fox and ESPN), the Netflix price tag for its NFL Christmas Day package (games that were previously considered part of broader CBS, Fox, and ESPN deals), or what Peacock and Amazon each paid for a single exclusive NFL Wild Card game.'
Mao continued: 'In recent seasons, the audience for the World Series has accounted for 30 to 40 percent of the total consumption in Fox's MLB package. The value of the current Fox deal was reported as $729 million per year, suggesting that World Series games alone could represent $218 to $292 million of the deal's annual value. One could also argue this range is on the conservative side, given the World Series is the jewel in the crown levering up the overall value of the Fox package. The World Series could conceivably fetch an even higher price as a standalone tentpole set of rights.'
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John Kosner, a former top ESPN digital executive who is now the president of Kosner Media, a digital and media consultancy and an investor and advisor in sports tech startups, believes the World Series could be the carrot that brings in a Netflix or YouTube as a major MLB player. The idea would be that if MLB wants a partner that can serve as a tentpole for all of its inventory, including local inventory, a streamer is a logical way to go. With revenue and reach as the twin goals of sports leagues, the circulation of the biggest streamers such as Netflix and Amazon will be broader than the broadcast networks when our scenario hits.
'Let's presume that MLB gets through their bargaining and is in a position where they can go to market in 2028 in a potentially new way,' Kosner said. 'What strikes me as interesting is them wanting a widely-distributed, wealthy streaming partner to facilitate a new look, all-in-one streaming operation. The carrot could be that the entity would then carry the World Series. Because what you really want is to deliver much more value in the regular season than you're able to at the moment. So, in order for the World Series to make sense on streaming, one of the key attributes of a partner would have to be a really strong promotional platform during the regular season to build awareness that's where the World Series is.
'Also, keep in mind that baseball has significant global appeal between Ohtani (who is Japanese), its position in Korea, and the large number of Latin and South American baseball players. We are seeing the NFL's experiment with YouTube with the Brazil game in September. That's part of the appeal with a global streaming entity.'
There are other issues at play. For those who are not hardcore daily MLB viewers, a streaming platform is often more accessible today than a broadcast platform, and that will only continue. Kosner noted that one of the strengths of streaming is that there's no shelf space issue. The October broadcast market is getting more and more crowded with pro and college football, so a streaming partner might allow MLB to present the World Series at exactly the time it wanted to present it, air whatever kind of pre- and post-game shows MLB wants, as well as an endless array of 24/7 promotion on the streamer's touch points.
'These platforms are different things to different people,' said Desser. 'If you posited this question in a 2015 environment, I don't think anyone was expecting that NFL playoff games might get streamed exclusively. But that's something that we're now accepting of. Clearly we're in a world where how people under 35 years old consume media is fundamentally different from the ways that their elders consume media.'
Both Desser and Kosner agreed that the only major sporting event that remains sacrosanct as far as over-the-air carriage is the Super Bowl. But keep an eye on what the NFL does later this decade. The NFL has the ability to opt out of its media contracts in 2029 and could approach the networks before the 2029 opt-out and try to renegotiate new deals, per Puck's John Ourand.
'The Super Bowl is a national holiday,' Kosner said. 'The profile of the World Series is more like NBA Finals or the college football playoff championship game as opposed to Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is in its own world.'
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So, back to our baseball broadcasters. Shulman is a realist. He knows that for the younger fans he meets around baseball, the World Series being moved to a streaming service would not make them blink.
'My son and I were on a baseball trip a decade ago, and I think I was watching the TV in the hotel room, and he was on his computer,' Shulman said. 'He said to me, 'If you had to give up one thing on the road between your television and your computer, what would you choose?' I said the computer. I need the TV. Man, I was wrong. Now I go days without turning on a TV — and I'm in TV!'
(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic, photo: Mary DeCicco / Getty Images)
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