Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand joined The Junkies Wednesday to talk big sports business news – namely, ESPN’s agreement with Penn Sportsbook and Barstool’s exit from Penn, how media rights helped spur the radical college football realignment, and streaming services hosting pro sports packages (namely Apple TV with MLB/MLS and YouTube TV with NFL Sunday Ticket).
But, as Ourand is a D.C. guy and remains an Orioles fan, the Junks had to ask him for his take on what MASN did to announcer Kevin Brown, suspending him for ‘derogatory’ comments that were taken straight from Orioles media material.
Bottom line: even Ourand, who covers sports business and media, has no idea what happened, but he knows it became a much bigger deal than it should of – and could affect the Orioles product negatively.
“I was watching last night’s game, and there was just a feeling throughout the game of dread, that there has been a momentum change this season because this became the dominant storyline in media,” Ourand said. “It went beyond sports, and I’m trying to figure it out. I’m a reporter, not a commentator, so I’m trying to figure out what the Orioles were thinking here. His comments were beyond benign, but I know the Orioles don’t want their announcers to reference the past five years when they were losing; one of the things I read is that they wanted to not reference Manny Machado after he left.”
The rub is the Orioles won three of four at Tropicana Field, the source of Brown’s comments (about Baltimore’s past struggles there), but to do this in the middle of a season, when the team is in first place and facing another AL contender, reeks of something Ourand stopped short of calling incompetence but did take the network to task for.
“There was a prickliness there, but just the fact the idea coming from the team is that they wanted to try new broadcasters, that shows me they don’t have TV people running MASN or making decisions there,” Ourand said. “You don’t do that when you’re playing the Yankees, or in the middle of the season when you’re in first place, or just celebrated the 1983 championship team – you want your No. 1 broadcaster there. This makes no sense; it has an erratic feel to it, and they say he’s going to be back on Friday, but there hasn’t even been a formal announcement or anything. It’s bizarre, because people don’t always care about the announcers – I’m watching the game no matter who is calling it – but it really has put a pall on the season.”
You can hear it from Ourand himself starting about 12 minutes into the clip above, or listen to his thoughts on everything media-related ahead of it as well!
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