With the season opening April 7, Braves fans who subscribe to carriers that have dropped Bally Sports South/Southeast are left to decide whether to change TV providers, wait it out in hopes of a resolution or forgo watching the games. On a conference call with Wall Street analysts last month, Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley said the company has “active dialogues” with the major streaming distributors, but he didn’t signal any breakthroughs in the stalemates. Neither Sinclair nor Bally Sports South/Southeast would comment for this article. The issue keeping the Bally-branded networks off Dish, YouTube TV (owned by Google), Hulu (owned by Disney) and several other streaming services (including Sling and FuboTV) boils down to how much the carriers should pay Sinclair. “Frankly, the way it is structured, I don’t think it’s attractive for most (MLB) teams to do that,” Maffei said. The Braves “continue to believe that direct-to-consumer (TV) is critical to our future,” team CEO Derek Schiller told an investor conference in November, “and we are actively engaged with Major League Baseball in developing what the future of streaming looks like.” But Greg Maffei, CEO of Braves owner Liberty Media, expressed skepticism on a conference call last month about Bally’s proposed DTC model. Braves fan Chris Harvey, a FuboTV subscriber in Tennessee Sinclair has agreements with five MLB teams so far to be included, reportedly the Tigers, Royals, Marlins, Brewers and Rays. He is interested in Sinclair’s planned direct-to-consumer (DTC) sports streaming service that may launch by midyear and allow fans to access telecasts of local teams’ games for a stand-alone fee.īut even when Sinclair launches such a service, Braves telecasts may not be part of it. … The thought of having to switch to, say, DirecTV is just too much trouble.” So he finds himself increasingly enjoying college baseball. “At first, I hated it,” he said of Dish not carrying the Bally-branded networks. He watched “a ton of games” on TBS when Ted Turner’s superstation made the Braves “America’s Team.” Explore The Braves didn’t need Kenley Jansen. “I would see the fan uproar, and generally speaking it was always the same thing: ‘We don’t care whose fault it is we just want you to do something about it,’” recalled Gray, who no longer works in the TV business.Īs a fan, however, he thinks it is “extremely important” that sports events be made available on increasingly popular streaming platforms “without making it overly expensive for the consumer.”ĭavid Walker, who lives in Statesboro, is a Dish Network subscriber who has been a Braves fan since his father took him to his first game in 1966, the team’s inaugural season in Atlanta. Gray worked for Fox Sports South in 2014-15, running social media accounts, and saw firsthand the reaction of viewers when carriage disputes would take the games off certain TV providers’ lineups. I don’t think it really impacted my level of fandom, per se.” “I’m a big stats guy, so I’d follow on my phone by looking at the box score and live updates,” the Roswell resident said. Explore How Kyle Muller and Clayton Kershaw became offseason throwing partners He was unable to watch the regular-season games last year, except for national broadcasts or when he was “out and about.” For the most part, he found other ways to keep up. Michael Gray, 32, a Braves fan “since before I can remember,” is a YouTube TV subscriber. (All postseason games were carried by widely available national networks.) ![]() ![]() Last year, ratings for Braves regular-season telecasts on Bally Sports South/Southeast were down 25% in the Atlanta TV market from 2019 levels. ![]() Some say the Braves shouldn’t tolerate a situation that limits viewership. Some say they have adapted to not getting the games. ![]() Some Braves fans say they plan to switch TV providers during the season so they can watch the games.
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