Arizona Diamondbacks MLB 2015 Latest News: Sign New TV Deal, Worth $1 Billion?
The Arizona Diamondbacks are set to sign a new local TV deal with Fox Sports Arizona. That in of itself is not huge news. The length of the deal isn't really huge news either as we have seen many other teams lock up local TV deals for 10 or 15 or 20 years. The deal could reportedly be worth $1 billion.
"The Diamondbacks became the latest team to cash in on baseball's exploding local television market, agreeing to remain with Fox Sports Arizona under a contract that's believed to be worth in excess of $1 billion," NBC's Hardball Talk reported.
It is not very surprising that Fox Sports is very willing to dole out big cash for the TV rights of Major League team in their home TV markets. Consistently for many team and TV markets these games do very well in the ratings.
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The Los Angeles Dodgers got a huge deal due to their market size, the regional Fox Sports channels have done very well for themselves with baseball game even in smaller markets. In Detroit, for example, Fox Sports Detroit rakes in huge TV audiences for broadcasting Tigers games.
Since Fox sports and other channels with big rights deals for baseball games are being paid TV channels, there is a lot of risk involved here. The trend in entertainment is away from pay TV services towards streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. However, sports has lagged behind that and MLB markets most of its steaming activities through MLB digital.
More and more there are streaming options for sporting events and eventually technology could move viewership away from the TV and to other mobile devices.
