You're a Dodger fan. You'd gladly pay to stream Dodgers games from SportsNet LA, but you don't want to purchase a cable or satellite subscription.
You couldn't do that last year. You can do it this year, but not without paying the company that operates SportsNet LA for separate services that you may not want or need.
With the Dodgers about to open a highly anticipated season (the team is a World Series favorite and could set a franchise attendance record, with excitement generated largely by the multimillion-dollar signings of Japanese-born stars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto), Spectrum announced on Tuesday. that streaming subscriptions would be available for SportsNet LA this year.
The price: Free.
The problem: You no longer need to purchase Spectrum TV service. However, if you don't, you must purchase Spectrum Internet and mobile phone service. The SportsNet LA streaming service will be operational for the Dodgers' first game on Wednesday.
Spectrum last October thrown out a streaming option for Spectrum SportsNet, its Lakers channel, but any fan in the Los Angeles market can subscribe, without purchasing anything else, for $19.99 per month or $149.99 per season.
For the Dodgers, Spectrum will offer free SportsNet LA streaming to any fan in the Los Angeles market who purchases its Internet and mobile phone service, offered starting Tuesday at a promotional price of $49.99 per month.
SportsNet LA's streaming deal covers only the 2024 season. A single streaming subscription combining the Dodgers and Lakers could have been complicated by the different ownership structures and distribution deals of the Dodgers and Lakers channels, but Spectrum is also undergoing a real-life test to see if fans might respond more favorably to a streaming subscription. single option or a broadband, phone and streaming package.
“In the changing television landscape, we are examining different approaches to making our regional sports networks available to fans while maximizing value for our customers,” said Spectrum spokesperson Bret Picciolo.
Major League Baseball and its teams are going through turbulent times. As cable and satellite viewership continues to shrink, so does the reliance on lucrative contracts in which all pay TV subscribers paid their local team even if they never watched a single game.
Spectrum's problem resonates throughout the cable and satellite industry: how to manage the decline of a traditionally lucrative subscriber base while positioning itself for a streaming future. Some small cable companies across the country have cited higher programming costs by pulling the plug on television altogether and limiting offerings to broadband and phone services.
Previously, Spectrum made the SportsNet LA broadcast available only to its television subscribers, as a subscription benefit. That benefit is still available.
The parent company of Bally Sports, home to the Angels and 11 other MLB teams, has been in bankruptcy proceedings for more than a year.
Bally has broadcast rights to five of those teams. Los Angeles is not one of them; Bally Sports West sells streaming subscriptions just for the Clippers, Ducks and Kings, bundled at $29.99 per month.
The San Diego Padres are one of three former Bally teams for which MLB now handles broadcasts. The Padres and the league have not yet announced cable or satellite options for San Diego this season, but streaming-only Padres subscriptions are on sale for $19.99 per month or $199.99 per year.
YES, the television home of the NBA's New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets, currently offers streaming subscriptions at an introductory price of $19.99 per month or $199.99 per year.
NESN, the home of the NHL's Red Sox and Boston Bruins, sells streaming subscriptions for $29.99 per month or $329.99 per year.
The significant disparity in the amount of money each team earns in annual local television revenue (the Dodgers earn roughly five times as much as the Padres, for example) has prompted MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred to push for each team to contribute your broadcast rights to a national program. package in which any fan could stream any game from anywhere, without the blackout restrictions that have long protected cable and satellite companies.
“There is a realization in the industry that for this business to be all it can be, we need to make an effort to get as close as possible to the model you're talking about,” Manfred told The Times in 2022.
It's unclear whether the league will be able to acquire all of those rights, much less reach a financial deal in which big-market teams like the Dodgers and Yankees agree to sacrifice significant broadcast revenue for the greater good.
But, in that interview two years ago, Manfred was asked if developing and implementing that model would be a five- or ten-year project.
“It won't be a 10,” he said then. “It's going to happen sooner than that.”
