Something significant is happening in Major League Baseball, and it has less to do with what's happening on the diamond than what's happening in the broadcast booth — or more precisely, who controls it. MLB's recent moves to consolidate local broadcast rights, including the absorption of Detroit Tigers and Red Wings broadcasts into a league-managed media operation, represent a fundamental shift in how professional sports content reaches fans. For sponsorship professionals, the implications are enormous.
For years, local sports broadcasting has been in crisis. Regional sports networks (RSNs) — once the backbone of how fans watched their hometown teams — have been collapsing under the weight of cord-cutting and unsustainable rights fees. Diamond Sports Group, which operated Bally Sports networks covering roughly half of MLB's teams, filed for bankruptcy in 2023. The fallout left teams scrambling for broadcast solutions and fans in some markets unable to watch their local teams without patchwork streaming arrangements.
MLB's response has been decisive: rather than wait for the market to sort itself out, the league is stepping in as its own media company. The Detroit Tigers situation is a case study in this approach, with MLB taking direct control of local broadcast production and distribution — a model that's likely to expand to other markets in the coming years.
From Rights Seller to Media Operator
The traditional model was straightforward. A team sold its local broadcast rights to an RSN, collected a rights fee, and let the network handle everything from production to advertising sales. The team got guaranteed revenue; the network got content to sell to cable distributors and advertisers.
That model worked beautifully when nearly every household had cable. But as streaming eroded the cable bundle, RSNs lost subscribers, and the economics fell apart. Rights fees that once seemed reasonable became impossible to sustain when the subscriber base shrank by roughly a third over the past decade.
MLB's new approach cuts out the middleman. By producing and distributing broadcasts directly — through its own streaming infrastructure and select broadcast partnerships — the league retains control over the entire media value chain. That means controlling not just the content, but the advertising inventory, the data, and the fan relationship.
What This Means for Sponsorship Inventory
Here's where it gets interesting for brands. Under the old RSN model, sponsorship inventory in local broadcasts was controlled by the network. Teams could negotiate some in-broadcast placements, but the bulk of advertising was sold by the RSN to its own advertisers. This created a fragmented market where brands often had to negotiate separately with teams and their broadcast partners.
With MLB controlling the broadcast, that fragmentation disappears. The league can offer brands a streamlined path to local market exposure through a single negotiation — and potentially bundle local broadcast inventory with national MLB media assets for more comprehensive packages.
This consolidation should also improve the quality and consistency of sponsorship data. When one entity controls the broadcast, it controls the measurement — meaning brands can expect more reliable attribution and more standardized reporting across markets.
- Unified ad sales: Brands can negotiate directly with MLB for local broadcast inventory, simplifying what was previously a fragmented process.
- Bundled packages: Local broadcast sponsorships could be packaged with national MLB media, streaming, and in-venue assets for cross-platform deals.
- Better data: League-controlled broadcasts mean league-controlled measurement, potentially offering sponsors more consistent and reliable attribution.
- Dynamic pricing: MLB can optimize ad rates based on real-time viewership data rather than the outdated Nielsen estimates that RSNs relied on.
The Detroit Model
The Detroit Tigers' situation offers a preview of how this could work at scale. With the team's broadcasts now under MLB's umbrella — alongside the Detroit Red Wings' broadcasts in a cross-sport arrangement — the league is essentially operating a local sports network without the legacy cost structure that sank the RSNs.
For a market like Detroit, this could actually be a net positive for sponsors. Rather than dealing with a financially distressed RSN that was cutting corners on production and struggling to maintain distribution, brands now have a well-capitalized media partner with national-scale resources and technology.
The production quality should improve, the streaming experience should be more reliable, and the advertising technology should be more sophisticated — all of which makes the inventory more valuable.
Implications for Ad Rates and Brand Access
The big question for sponsors is what this means for pricing. On one hand, consolidation typically reduces competition among sellers, which could push rates higher. When MLB is the only game in town for local broadcast inventory, brands lose the ability to play the team against the RSN for better deals.
On the other hand, MLB has strong incentives to make local broadcast sponsorship accessible and attractive to a wide range of advertisers. The league needs to prove that its direct-to-consumer media model works commercially, and that means filling ad inventory at healthy rates across all markets — not just the big ones.
Sponsorship intelligence platforms like SponsorFlo.ai will be essential for brands trying to navigate this new landscape, providing real-time visibility into how inventory is being priced and packaged across MLB's evolving media ecosystem.
The Bigger Picture
MLB isn't the only league moving in this direction. The NBA has explored similar models, and MLS has already centralized much of its media strategy. But MLB's scale — with 162 games per team per season and deep local market penetration — makes its transition particularly significant.
If MLB successfully establishes itself as a media company that happens to operate a baseball league (rather than the other way around), it will reshape the competitive dynamics of sports sponsorship. Brands will need to think about MLB not just as a sports property but as a media platform with sophisticated targeting, measurement, and distribution capabilities.
For now, the Detroit experiment is worth watching closely. It's a proof of concept that could define how local sports media — and the billions in sponsorship dollars attached to it — works for the next generation.
