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It’s Opening Day and Major League Baseball video streaming is chaos
How do you stream local MLB games in 2024? It depends where you live.
CORD-CUTTER CONFIDENTIAL
By
Jared Newman, TechHiveMAR 28, 2024 3:00 AM PDT
In 2024, watching local baseball games without cable will either be cheap and simple or expensive and complicated, and it all comes down to location.
In a few lucky cities, you can spend $100 on a full-season pass and watch nearly every in-market game live–and with no blackouts. In others, you might need to spend $100
per month for local games as part of a bloated pay TV bundle. (I’ve compiled a chart of all the streaming options for each team below.)
This is the mess in which Major League Baseball finds itself as the regional sports network business collapses. Thanks to a series of miscalculations, the league and its partners have once again failed to deliver standalone baseball streaming or affordable bundled options for the majority of MLB teams. Heading into the 2024 season, only 12 out of 30 teams offer local game streams without an expensive bundle attached to it.
MLB streaming options: An overview for 2024
Here’s a chart showing every Major League Baseball team, its corresponding regional sports network (or RSN), how to get that RSN as part of a pay TV package, and whether a standalone alternative exists: (You can also view
a version of this chart on Google Sheets.)
| Team | Regional Sports Network (RSN) | Streaming bundles with RSN | Standalone RSN option |
|---|
| Arizona Diamondbacks | Diamondbacks TV | DTV Stream, Fubo | DBacks.tv ($100/yr) |
| Atlanta Braves | Bally Sports South | DTV Stream, Fubo | – |
| Baltimore Orioles | MASN | DTV Stream, Fubo | – |
| Boston Red Sox | NESN | DTV Stream, Fubo | NESN 360($30/mo or $330/yr) |
| Chicago Cubs | Marquee Sports Network | DTV Stream, Fubo | Marquee Sports Network($20/mo) |
| Chicago White Sox | NBC Sports Chicago | DTV Stream, Fubo, YTTV, Hulu Live TV | – |
| Cincinnati Reds | Bally Sports Ohio | DTV Stream, Fubo | – |
| Cleveland Guardians | Bally Sports Great Lakes | DTV Stream, Fubo | – |
| Colorado Rockies | Rockies TV | – | Rockies.TV ($100/yr) |
| Detroit Tigers | Bally Sports Detroit | DTV Stream, Fubo | Bally Sports+($20/mo or $190/yr) |
| Houston Astros | Space City Home Network | DTV Stream, Fubo | – |
| Kansas City Royals | Bally Sports Kansas City | DTV Stream, Fubo | Bally Sports+ ($20/mo or $190/yr) |
| Los Angeles Angels | Bally Sports West | DTV Stream, Fubo | – |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | Spectrum SportsNet LA | DTV Stream | Free with Spectrum One internet + phone |
| Miami Marlins | Bally Sports Florida | DTV Stream, Fubo | Bally Sports+ ($20/mo or $190/yr) |
| Milwaukee Brewers | Bally Sports Wisconsin | DTV Stream, Fubo | Bally Sports+ ($20/mo or $190/yr) |
| Minnesota Twins | Bally Sports North | DTV Stream, Fubo | – |
| New York Mets | SportsNet NY | DTV Stream, Fubo, Hulu | – |
| New York Yankees | YES Network | DTV Stream, Fubo | Watch YES Network($20/mo or $200/yr) |
| Oakland Athletics | NBC Sports California | DTV Stream, Fubo, YTTV, Hulu Live TV | – |
| Philadelphia Phillies | NBC Sports Philadelphia | DTV Stream, Fubo, YTTV, Hulu Live TV | – |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | SportsNet Pittsburgh | DTV Stream, Fubo | – |
| San Diego Padres | Padres TV | DTV Stream, Fubo | Padres.TV ($100/yr) |
| San Francisco Giants | NBC Sports Bay Area | DTV Stream, Fubo, YTTV, Hulu Live TV | – |
| Seattle Mariners | ROOT Sports Northwest | DTV Stream, Fubo | – |
| St. Louis Cardinals | Bally Sports Midwest | DTV Stream, Fubo | – |
| Tampa Bay Rays | Bally Sports Sun | DTV Stream, Fubo | Bally Sports+ ($20/mo or $190/yr) |
| Texas Rangers | Bally Sports Southwest | DTV Stream, Fubo | – |
| Toronto Blue Jays | Sportsnet | – | SportsNet+($20/mo or $180/yr) |
| Washington Nationals | MASN | DTV Stream, Fubo | – |
Note: DTV Stream stands for DirecTV Stream, and YTTV stands for YouTube TV.
The big winners here are local fans of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Colorado Rockies, and San Diego Padres.
These teams were previously carried by Bally Sports, whose owner, Diamond Sports Group,
filed for bankruptcy in early 2023. When Diamond failed to make interest payments to the teams, its rights reverted to the league, which in turn has launched $100-per-season streaming options for each team. (Fans can also bundle
MLB.TV‘s out-of-market package for an extra $100, for a discount of $50.)
Over the past couple years, some regional sports networks have also launched their own standalone streaming options, including
Marquee Sports Network,
NESN, and
YES Network. These are more expensive than the MLB-owned options, ranging from $20 to $30 per month, but they’re still cheaper than the full pay TV package that some other RSNs still require.
Bally Sports has its own standalone streaming service, called Bally Sports+, but it only has streaming rights for five MLB teams: The Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, Miami Marlins, Milwaukee Brewers, and Tampa Bay Rays. That leaves seven MLB teams whose Bally Sports coverage requires a pay TV bundle.
Keep in mind that these in-market streaming options still won’t get you complete coverage. Some games will be nationally televised on ESPN or Fox—plus TNT during the playoffs—while others may be exclusive to
Apple TV+(Friday night games) or
Peacock.
Why is MLB streaming such a mess?
Major League Baseball is in this situation because it either failed to foresee the rise of cord-cutting or was blinded by the short-term benefits of ignoring it.
Look back, for instance, to some of the rights deals that MLB teams made in the previous decade: The Angels made a
20-year deal with Fox Sports (now Bally Sports) worth a reported $3 billion in 2011. The Rangers took
$3 billion for a 20-year deal in 2010. The Cardinals committed to
15 years with Fox Sports for $1 billion in 2015, and the Reds
made a similar deal the following year.
Even back then,
cord-cutting was a real phenomenon, and anyone paying attention could see that it would only
gather stream as more streaming options became available. Instead of planning for that outcome, the teams tied themselves to model that’s especially vulnerable to cord cutting, as people
switch to live TV services without regional sports or
give up cable-style bundles entirely. Prior to filing for bankruptcy, Diamond
took on huge lossesdue to “subscriber erosion,” and Warner Bros. Discovery opted to
exit the business entirely.
Mitigating the damage isn’t so easy now. While Diamond Sports Group has sought to stream more MLB teams on its Bally Sports+ service, the league
wants those streaming rights for itself as it hopes to launch its own in-market streaming service next year. For a time, it seemed that Diamond would relinquish more team rights through bankruptcy, but it recently
found a savior in Amazon, which is helping to pay off Diamond’s debts in exchange for an equity stake. Still, the Amazon investment doesn’t give Diamond any additional streaming rights, so the result is another stalemate that once again leaves fans in limbo.
Meanwhile, other regional sports networks have their own reasons for sticking to the bundle. SNY is partly owned by Comcast and Charter, and has “
favorable and long-term deals” with those companies to be included in skinnier cable packages, the New York Post
reports. In late 2022, NBCUniversal hinted at
bringing regional NBC Sports networks to Peacock, but it also
sold off one of those networks and hasn’t mentioned the Peacock possibility in more than a year. Instead of providing a truly standalone option, Charter is using its ownership of Spectrum SportsNet to
boost home and mobile internet subscriptions, with free live Dodgers streams for customers who bundle both.
What’s a baseball fan to do?
For fans whose favorite team plays in a different city from where they live,
MLB.TVremains essential, with every regular season, out-of-market game for $150 (or $130 for a single team). But as before, it’s not a solution for local games.
As
Phillip Swann reports, some fans have circumvented MLB.TV’s local blackouts with a VPN, but this requires some technical expertise and additional costs, and there’s no guarantee that the league won’t block VPN use. Some viewers will inevitably turn to piracy as well, though doing so
carries additional risks and moral compromises.
Otherwise, 2024 is shaping up to be another lost year for affordable baseball streaming in the majority of U.S. markets. The game itself is easier to enjoy than ever—last year’s
big rule changes helped a lot—but it’s still too hard to watch when you can’t be in the stands.
www.comparitech.com
