IN the wake of Diamond Sports Group’s decision to drop all of their media rights deals except for the Atlanta Braves, MLB announced Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila) that it will produce and distribute local games for the Minnesota Twins, Milwaukee Brewers and Cleveland Guardians next season.
The Texas Rangers, who had been with Diamond, have cut ties with the group and are exploring their local media options for the 2025 season. Last month, the team announced it was working on a direct-to-distributor broadcast model.
Seven other teams–the St. Louis Cardinals, Tampa Bay Rays, Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Angels, Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals and Miami Marlins–were also freed of their in-market rights deals with Diamond. Per a Sportico report, the Cardinals, Rays, Angels, Royals and Marlins are among those seven franchises in talks to renew for the 2025 season.
The Guardians, whose reach on its regional sports network this season was approximately 1.45 million households, will now be available to approximately 4.86 million households with MLB, an increase of 235 percent. The Twins will go from about 1.08 million homes to about 4.4 million homes with MLB, receiving a 307 percent boost.
As for the Brewers, who had a similar household audience to the aforementioned teams, they will retain the direct-to-consumer streaming option they had with their previous local media outlet.
MLB produced and distributed games for the San Diego Padres, Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks in 2024, and the new arrangement with the Twins, Brewers and Guardians will look similar. MLB handled the agreements with cable and satellite distributors and made available direct-to-consumer streaming options at Padres.TV, Rockies.TV and Dbacks.TV.
“With the media landscape continuing to evolve, Major League Baseball is committed to serving our fans by ensuring they can see their favorite clubs, removing blackouts where we can, and ultimately growing the reach of our games,” said Noah Garden, MLB Deputy Commissioner for Business and Media. “We are proud to bring Guardians, Brewers and Twins games to their passionate fan bases with the same high-quality production that we have demonstrated in Arizona, Colorado, and San Diego.”
Special features of MLB’s local game production this season included live look-ins to the MLB Replay Operations Center, pregame and postgame on-field locations, in-game interviews with players, a new right field camera and Ump Cam.
