Just announced Tuesday, Major League Baseball will produce and distribute local games for the Minnesota Twins along with the Cleveland Guardians and Milwaukee Brewers for the 2025 season. The change comes on the heels of bankruptcy hearings from Diamond Sports Group who had contracts with nearly all of the the MLB teams. The Twins deal with Diamond expired in September.
According to MLB, the new arrangement will give fans more options to watch games on television or to stream digitally, although there is no clarity yet on what the local television outlet would be.
"Today is a good day. It's an exciting day for the organization but more important for our fans and partners," says Twins President Dave St. Peter. ""We can't wait to get started to bring this to life."
The arrangements with the Guardians, Brewers, and Twins will be similar to how MLB produced and distributed games for the Arizona Diamondbacks, Colorado Rockies, and San Diego Padres during the 2024 season.
There is no specific channel for the three teams yet, including the Twins. St. Peter said on a call with local media Tuesday that the team expects MLB to negotiate a partner in the market. That will likely not include a regular, over-the-air traditional television station. Instead, MLB would negotiate with cable and satellite distributors to include a Twins channel. This would not be a 24/7 channel, instead just focused on delivering live games and Twins broadcasts.
This model is not, in it's current format, a regional sports network. I think that's an important distinction. It's really live games, replays of games, and then yes, some pregame and postgame. Never say never but there is no over-the-air partner in mind at this point," St. Peter confirmed. "It's not anticipated but we hope to have further conversation with the league about."
Last season, MLB negotiated cable and satellite distribution agreements and made direct-to-consumer streaming options available at Dbacks.TV, Padres.TV, and Rockies.TV. That would be the same for the Twins. St. Peter wouldn't confirm the price point but last season, Twins.TV cost $99.99 for the season. He says that price point would be established closer to the season starting. There would be no more local blackouts for streaming games, a frustrating point for many fans who wanted full digital access.
There is no financial details available for how Arizona, San Diego or Colorado did revenue-wise following the change, but there's no question teams didn't see anywhere near what they did with lucrative, rights fees paid to teams by the regional Bally Sports networks.
"We do expect a reduction of local revenue coming to the Twins in 2025," says St. Peter. "We also understand the expansion of reach and what that'll do for our fanbase. It's time to get on with that. And we're excited about that and our ownership understands the consequences of that."
Concerns from fans over the team's payroll were also addressed with St. Peter saying ownership knew exactly what they were getting with the MLB deal.
"Our ownership spoke on payroll recently and they knew the direction we were heading on local television," he explained. "I don't expect this to have a direct impact on payroll."
More information from the league about where and how fans can watch games will be made available closer to the 2025 season.