Blackout buster? SNY to stream Mets games as MLB reaches 22 teams available without TV bundle

SportsNet New York, the Mets’ local television partner, will launch a subscription streaming service on Tuesday that allows cord-cutting fans to watch games without paying for a TV bundle. The move is part of a growing trend that Major League Baseball hopes will help combat a longstanding irritant for fans: blackouts.

“The biggest thought is fan friendly, right?” commissioner Rob Manfred said. “As long as that digital product is out there, the fan, whether it’s the best option or not, has an option to get the games and that’s really important.”

SNY is the ninth team broadcaster this year to offer a standalone in-market streaming product for the first time — and the first third-party regional sports network to offer the service in conjunction with MLB itself. That partnership could prove notable in the context of Manfred’s broader ambitions to sell more national packages to major digital companies, an effort that would require cooperation from big-market teams like the Mets.

More than two-thirds of the teams in the league — 22 in total — can now be watched without a cable TV bundle. And the list of teams that can be streamed could still grow this season.

Said Manfred: “We are having conversations with other people.”

It hasn’t always been easy to watch a ballgame. Some fans have gotten rid of cable or satellite television, leaving them without the channel that carries their favorite team. Other fans, perhaps younger ones, might never have had such a package. And a more tech savvy crowd that has signed up for digital bundles — YouTubeTV, for example — has sometimes found their team’s channel isn’t included.

But Mets fans now join a growing number of fan bases that have an alternative. Viewers inside the team’s TV market — which includes fans in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania — have the option to sign up for a monthlong ($24.99), season-long ($124.99) or yearlong ($149.99) subscription.

Because SNY is partnering with MLB, the new service will include features that the league makes available in its other streaming products such as live stats and highlights. The offering will also include a combination bundle that gives fans access to Mets games in-market via SNY, and all other out-of-market games through MLB.tv.

“We looked at it with all kinds of different partners,” said Steve Raab, president of SNY. “We didn’t think it made a lot of sense to build the platform by ourselves. We thought about the opportunity to bundle with an existing provider who’s got an established platform, who is really able to bring experience, and enhancements maybe that we wouldn’t be able to bring. And then it becomes a question of, who are you working with?

“At the end of the day, for us, we just felt like our interests and baseball’s interests were most aligned. They have a superior product.”

In coming years, Manfred wants the sport to sell more national packages that would include games from all 30 teams. MLB is handling broadcasts for five teams this year, but those direct arrangements are all in smaller markets: Arizona, Cleveland, Colorado, Minnesota and San Diego. At present, though, the MLB-SNY partnership is much more limited than what Manfred’s plan would require.

“The more people that are doing business with us, the better it is for us,” Manfred said. “We’re trying hard to convince people they ought to be in business with us.”

Though the New York Yankees have partnered with the YES Network to provide a direct-to-consumer product for two seasons already, Raab said that SNY did not feel pressure to now bring its own offering to match a crosstown rival. He said SNY had been considering the move for three years. So, why the wait?

For any RSN, the decision to go direct-to-consumer comes with business implications. The traditional baseball television model, where each team has a territory that is considered “in-market,” is built on exclusivity. A regional sports network like SNY pays a team a large fee to exclusively carry games. Cable and satellite companies then pay the station to carry it in their bundles.

Those cable and satellite companies are not enthused by consumers having other ways to access content they provide.

“It’s taken a few years to get to a point with our existing cable and satellite and telco partners to figure out an equation that allows those partnerships to still be what they should be, but also have an opportunity to then offer something to sports fans who aren’t part of part of their bundles,” Raab said.

But as subscribers continuously leave, cable and satellite companies are paying RSNs less than they used to across the board — whether a station has gone direct-to-consumer or not. And as the pay has shrunk, RSNs and their team and league partners are now scurrying to at least get more eyeballs.

“For us, this is about maintaining reach while we evolve into a new economic model,” Manfred said.

Although streaming is perhaps the future of sports broadcasting and television more broadly, no RSN today, not even one in a big market like New York, can subsist on streaming revenue alone.

“It is not a replacement for linear (traditional TV) subscribers and linear distribution,” Raab said. “What you’d like to see is that it’s a healthy complement.”

SNY hopes to reach “mid-five figures” in subscriptions in its first year, Raab said. Hypothetically, if the network brings in 50,000 subscribers, all on full-year sign-ups for $149.99, it would bring in $7.5 million — a tiny figure relative to the undisclosed annual rights fee the network pays the Mets.

Direct-to-consumer price points vary. The San Diego Padres, who had more than 45,000 subscribers last year, and the other four teams MLB is broadcasting itself, for example, cost one-third less: $99.99 for a year.

“From Day One, we’ve talked about a hybrid model: keep as much as the cable bundle as you can, and then start to build the DTC,” Manfred said. “It’s nowhere near replacing the benefit of the cable bundle.”

But the more local broadcasts that are available as standalone products, the more opportunities fans have to avoid a dreaded word: blackouts. The term applies to a few different scenarios in sports broadcasting, but the result is always the same: frustrated fans who want to watch a game but cannot do so, or do so without greater cost and effort.

One of the oddities about baseball broadcasting is that it can be easier for fans who live far away from their team’s city to watch games than those in it. For many years, MLB has offered a comprehensive product for out-of-market fans through MLB.tv. Through that, a Mets fan in, say, Los Angeles, could easily watch virtually all Mets regular-season games, because Los Angeles is outside of the Mets’ territory.

Before Tuesday, however, a Mets fan residing in New York had no way to get the Mets unless they subscribed to a TV package, digital or traditional, that included the Mets’ channel, SNY. Although the league has pushed to get as many teams available via in-market streaming, Manfred said it falls short of a mandate.

“Edict is a tough word,” he said. “We made clear to the clubs that blackouts were a problem and that reach should be a priority. And I think they were responsive to us making those arguments.”

Manfred and MLB do not technically control what a team does with its local in-market television rights. That power resides with the clubs, although Manfred seeks to change that in coming years. If his office has control, he believes it would be easier to create the new leaguewide packages for the major streaming companies. He’s modeling the plan on the NBA, which last year reached deals worth a combined $77 billion over time.

A package carried by a major streaming company would come blackout-free, but fans would have to pay for the particular service. That setup also would impact networks like SNY, requiring the teams of local broadcast partners to forego more of their inventory. SNY is carrying 125 of the Mets’ 162 games next season, although the number could change slightly depending on what games the league’s current national partners choose to carry.

However, Manfred said he does not believe the league will eventually face a potential conflict with RSNs like SNY down the road over the number of games available.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “One thing we are blessed with is a ton of inventory. And I think even if we took more games nationally, there’s going to be a need for local broadcasts still. And I think RSNs will be part of that answer for a while.”

Whether big-market teams like the Mets or Yankees participate in such a plan is a major question, because their TV rights are particularly valuable. Any national package is going to require the oomph of big-market teams like the Mets and star outfielder Juan Soto.

It’s unclear how many years remain on SNY’s deal with the Mets, though a person briefed on the contract who was not authorized to speak publicly said it lasts well beyond 2030.

SNY remains majority owned by the previous Mets’ ownership, the Wilpon family, with cable companies Comcast and Charter as minority owners. The relationship is at least somewhat different these days because the network and the team no longer share the same owners.

“For the most part, the Mets and SNY are aligned,” Raab said. “Occasionally, there will be something that comes up that I wouldn’t consider material, that the Mets decide to do something because they think it’s better for the team though it may not lean in the network’s direction. We always have a conversation about it. We’re an important partner of theirs, and that’s something they acknowledge every day, and they want us to be healthy and to thrive.”

All RSNs, even those in the largest markets, are affected by cord-cutting, it’s just a matter of degree. SNY reportedly was for sale in recent years. Asked whether that was the case today, Raab said “we continue to operate as we’ve been operating.”

Ultimately, Raab wasn’t sure where the new MLB-SNY partnership would fit into MLB’s bigger-picture play.

“It’s a great question,” he said. “I don’t think baseball has anything quite like this. They’ve stepped in on some regional streaming and linear deals that I think were probably more distressed, right? Whereas I think we’re coming at this from really a strong foundation.”

(Top photo of Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor being interviewed by Steve Gelbs of SNY: David J. Griffin / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)