Major League Baseball announced Tuesday that next season’s games between the Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers and Minnesota Twins will be produced by the league itself after Diamond Sports Group opted not to renew its contracts with the teams. It was announced that it would be broadcast locally.
MLB announced in a press release that household viewership for Guardians games will increase by 235% to 4.86 million households in 2025. Twins games will reach 4.4 million households, an increase of 307%. The expansion of the distribution range is due to the elimination of power outages. MLB produces and broadcasts games on behalf of regional sports networks and makes them available through direct-to-consumer streaming. This means matches will not be affected by regional power outages.
The Brewers already have direct-to-consumer streaming options available to fans, and MLB plans to continue offering them. The league plans to develop direct-to-consumer streaming options for the Guardians and Twins.
MLB did not expect Diamond Sports Group, which is currently undergoing bankruptcy proceedings, to withdraw so many teams at once, let alone to withdraw so many teams at once. However, DSG announced on October 2 that it will not renew its contracts with the Twins, Brewers, Guardians, and Texas Rangers, which expire at the end of the 2024 season. DSG declined to sign two other teams, the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays, and indicated that five more teams’ contracts, which expire in 2025, would need to be renegotiated.
MLB may not have planned to produce and broadcast local games between the Brewers, Twins and Guardians next year, but that’s not a new arrangement for them. MLB arranged cable and satellite contracts to broadcast local games for the Colorado Rockies, Arizona Diamondbacks, and San Diego Padres. We also developed direct-to-consumer streaming options for each team.
The Rangers will not have any MLB games produced or broadcast next year, but they also do not want to partner with Diamond Sports Group. According to an MLB press release, they are “considering local media options for the 2025 season.”
