MLB is approaching a key inflection point in a difficult transition to a streaming-based future for its local media distribution.

The Mets and SportsNet New York this week rolled out a new, direct-to-consumer offering access to the club’s local games without a traditional cable or satellite TV subscription. The initiative makes the Mets the 22nd MLB club to pursue such a move, and follows a frenetic offseason that saw the completion of Main Street Sports’ bankruptcy reorganization and rebranding, as well as several other baseball clubs such as the Rangers and Twins making significant moves into the over-the-top streaming space. 

The shift no doubt is chasing consumers who have either cut the cord from traditional pay-TV or never entered in the first place. Will it replace the critical club revenues previously provided by linear TV? Certainly not yet, says MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, but it’s now getting closer to doing so. In the meantime, the heightened streaming efforts are also helping attract younger fans imperative for the league’s long-term growth.

“I think we’ve been clear that at least for some interim period, there’s going to be a hybrid model out there that we’re going to continue to monetize on the linear side while the streaming side develops more fully,” Manfred said at a spring training media availability in Arizona. “I do think that the combination of the remaining cable activity and streaming can get clubs into a good position.”

Larger Goals

The overhaul is only part of a planned and much larger reconstruction of MLB’s media business in which Manfred is aiming to pool both national and local rights in a centralized strategy in 2028—when current deals with ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery are due to expire.

That media situation, in turn, is also being eyed as a critical aid to address large-scale revenue and payroll disparity that is quickly rising to the top of the sport’s worries—both among baseball fans and within league offices. 

“Disparity should be, it certainly is, at the top of my list of concerns about what’s occurring in the sport,” Manfred said.

“We certainly have owners in the game who are as concerned as fans are about the level of disparity in the game. … I think that issue, combined with the effect of the changes in the media environment are 1–2 on the radar screen of owners. They’re related, at least right now, because the brunt of the downturn in the regional sports network market has been felt generally in our smaller markets.”

Seeking further fruits after a historic business boom in 2024, MLB is projecting another attendance increase this year. 

League commissioner Rob Manfred said Tuesday that early sales numbers point to MLB posting yet another increase at the gate, following gains seen in both 2023 and last year, reaching a total of 71.35 million. If another boost happens in 2025, that would represent the first three-year streak of MLB attendance gains since 2005–2007. 

“At the risk of jinxing myself, we do have great expectations for 2025,” Manfred said during a spring training media availability in Arizona. “Our clubs are telling us that they expect that we’ll be up, attendance-wise.”

Three main components are fueling the increases at the gate:

• A set of rule changes, first implemented in 2023, included a pitch clock, larger bases, and a ban on extreme defensive shifts. Those alterations have promoted a much more action-filled brand of baseball being played and fueled significant improvements in key measures such as average game times and stolen bases—in turn boosting the sport’s appeal, particularly among younger fans.
• A historically robust collection of star on-field talent, particularly international and younger players, that includes Shohei Ohtani, Elly De La Cruz, and Paul Skenes, among others. 
• Big-market teams such as the Dodgers and Yankees performing and spending at high levels, a group that perhaps will be joined this year by the Red Sox. 

“Over the last couple of years, we feel like we’ve made great improvements with respect to the game on the field,” Manfred said. “We have a great generation of really talented players who are playing a game that is crisp, athletic, and action-packed.”

Over in Queens

The Mets, of course, will be in the spotlight all season, with last year’s trip to the National League Championship Series followed by the signing of free agent Juan Soto to a record-setting $765 million contract. 

That unprecedented, 15-year deal quickly prompted a spike in ticket sales for the club. Mets owner Steve Cohen, however, is still looking for an even greater lift, and Tuesday was lamenting the relatively meager totals at Citi Field from when the Mets finished 18th in the league with a total draw of 2.33 million—nearly a million behind the crosstown Yankees.

“I didn’t like it. It really bothered me,” Cohen said of the Mets’ 2024 attendance. “People didn’t show up. I can’t speak for why that is. … There’s always been a little bit of skepticism with the Mets and believing that we’re going to be sustainable winners, sustainably in the playoffs.”

Cohen, speaking at the club’s spring training facility in Florida, did note the sales bump heading into the 2025 season.

“I’m really hopeful. I’m really looking forward to this year being a year when fans come out,” he said.

The NBA’s TV ratings have been a central topic of conversation all season long as the league has faced declining viewership numbers.

But after a slow first few months of the 2024–2025 season with double-digit percentage declines, the league has partially recovered. Entering the second half of the season, the NBA is averaging 1.76 million viewers across ESPN and TNT platforms, a 5% year-over-year decline, according to Nielsen.

Declining TV viewership is not exclusive to the NBA. The NHL is down 11% this year—despite a widely successful 4 Nations Face-Off—and even the NFL was hit with a 2% dip this year. The wide trend can be attributed to the decline in overall cable subscribers, which is down 8% year over year, according to Nielsen.

For all the hand-wringing about the NBA, its social media numbers continue to surge. The league’s content across social media has generated 83.5 billion views this year, up 41% from last year, per Videocites.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that the league needs to curb its ratings decline. An easy solution may just come next season when the league’s 11-year, $7.7 billion media-rights deal kicks in. Warner Bros. Discovery will lose broadcasting rights to the NBA, as NBC and Amazon Prime Video join ESPN.

NBA games on ESPN platforms are essentially flat compared to last year, but the 5% overall viewership decline can be attributed to the 11% dip in games on TNT platforms. The big driver for ESPN ratings this year was the Christmas Day slate that was up 87% versus last year but benefited from all five games airing on ABC.

TNT’s cable channels simply do not have the distribution of NBC’s free TV audience. The addition of Peacock, plus the added buzz of a new network, may also help. 

However, the opposite can also be argued with games moving to Prime Video, which will likely see a dip in viewership behind Amazon’s paywall similar to what happened when the NFL moved Thursday Night Football to Amazon.

MLS expansion club San Diego FC will make its regular-season debut Sunday at LAFC, as the league grows to 30 teams and franchise valuations continue to soar.

San Diego’s ownership group, led by British Egyptian entrepreneur Mohamed Mansour and the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation (the first Native American ownership group in global soccer), agreed to pay an MLS-record $500 million expansion fee when it was awarded a team in 2023.

That’s up almost 54% from the previous MLS high of $325 million that Charlotte FC paid in 2019 (launched in 2022), and the same amount Bill Foley’s group paid ($500 million) for the Vegas Golden Knights when they entered the NHL in 2017.

“People are willing to invest a lot of money just to get into MLS,” San Diego FC co-owner and CEO Tom Penn tells Front Office Sports. 

Penn has some experience launching MLS clubs, as he was a cofounder, part-owner, and the first president of LAFC, which paid $110 million to enter MLS in 2014 and is now the most valuable team in the league, worth more than $1 billion. Penn exited and divested from LAFC in 2020.

Stateside State of Mind

Why is so much cash flowing into MLS? 

“In part because of the growth of the league itself, and the sport in America,” Penn says. “But also because of the construct of a closed league without promotion and relegation.” 

That latter part is key, after last week’s announcement from the second-tier United Soccer League about plans to launch its own Division I men’s professional league and potentially implement promotion and relegation as the vast majority of global soccer has.

“The rest of the world always sort of turns their nose up at that, and says it’s not a proper way to do things,” Penn says of the MLS structure. “But the truth is that these opportunities in American sport, across all leagues, these are like works of art—precious commodities. It’s like a Monet or a Renoir because only 30 of these exist, and you’re guaranteed to stay in that league. And therefore you have real value towards the lower end of the league.”

It’s that reason why someone like Mansour, who has a personal net worth of more than $3 billion, chose MLS to invest in. “When you see the league-wide valuation, it stacks up really, really favorably against other leagues in the world,” Penn says. 

Building From the Ground Up

San Diego will play its home matches at the largest soccer-specific venue in the U.S., the 35,000-capacity Snapdragon Stadium, which it shares with the NWSL’s San Diego Wave and the San Diego State football team.

Beyond the $500 million expansion fee, San Diego has invested roughly $150 million into its facilities, which include the newly opened Sharp HealthCare Performance Center that is part of the club’s 125,000-square-foot campus in El Cajon, Calif., on the Sycuan Reservation. 

That’s also where San Diego operates its youth academy, which is part of the Right to Dream system that Mansour owns and has campuses in Denmark, Egypt, and Ghana, where he also owns teams.