MLB’s Rob Manfred says TV path is up to teams. But is that really a choice?

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred is doing his best to frame baseball’s regional TV debacle as the sort of choice one has in a democracy.

“We have said to the clubs: We’re available to you as an alternative,” Manfred told reporters Tuesday before the All-Star Game. “If, in fact, your rights are up, and you find an RSN [regional sports network] deal whether it’s with Bally’s or somebody else — or for that matter, an over-the-air deal that you like — they are your local rights. God bless you, do what you want to do.”

But at least for now, it feels like a false choice. Teams can try to work out deals for 2025 and beyond with Diamond Sports or another RSN platform, except MLB won’t give them the rights to distribute games with a standalone streaming package and nobody knows yet if Diamond Sports will emerge from bankruptcy; or teams can join MLB’s platform and get stable widespread distribution but almost certainly considerably less money.

“The RSNs were a great business, lots of people paid for programming they didn’t necessarily want,” Manfred also said Tuesday, getting the quiet part out loud and on the record. “It’s hard to replicate that kind of revenue absent that kind of bundling concept.”

As I talked about on Wednesday’s Daily Delivery podcast, Manfred struck a different tone Tuesday than he has in the past. While Manfred previously seemed to be taking a hardline approach in getting teams to line up for MLB’s production and distribution in hopes of having roughly half the league under that umbrella by at least 2025, he now appears resigned to it potentially taking longer.

“Maybe a different issue when we get more prepared to go back to market in 2028,” he said, referring to when MLB’s national media deals can be renegotiated, “but certainly in this interim period, it’s up to the clubs to make a judgment as to whether the alternative we’re offering is the best one, or whether there is another better alternative in the market.”

Perhaps his tone will change again when a bankruptcy judge decides at the end of July whether Diamond Sports (the parent company for Bally Sports channels) has a viable path forward, and having to address it during the mid-July All-Star Game is just a matter of bad timing.

But talking about 2028 seems like an awfully long “interim” period, especially for a team like the Twins, who are stuck with no streaming rights as part of the one-year contract they signed to re-up with Bally Sports North and unreliable TV distribution because of the impasse between Diamond Sports and Comcast.

One would imagine those are must-haves for any new deals the Twins do in 2025 and beyond (and there is at least some optimism the Comcast situation could be resolved in time to restore access this season), but the money also has to add up for any budget-conscious team.

For now, Manfred is saying to teams: You can have money or you can have distribution, but you can’t have both. And it’s up to you to decide which of those two far-from-perfect options you want.