Every year for the last few years, we write articles here about how to watch the Kansas City Royals . Just two decades ago, that you would have needed such a guide would have seemed ridiculous. Back then,
to watch the Royals you would simply do so on cable television or listen on the radio. The only wrinkle was if some games were nationally broadcast, in which case you just navigate to another channel.
Now, it’s only wrinkles. FanDuel Sports Network carried all of the non-nationally televised games, but there were differences in if and how you could watch based on your location and whether you were streaming FanDuel or watching whatever regional sports network actually appeared on your cable channel.
And that’s easy! In the past few years, some Royals have been on Apple TV+, Fox Sports One, Roku, YouTube, and even on Facebook Watch. Fans outside the Royals blackout zone have had the ability to use MLB.TV but not if the Royals were playing whatever team whose blackout zone they happened to be in.
To make matters worse, spats between media companies have sent fans frustrated and left in the cold. It used to be that you could simply get Fox Sports Kansas City on YouTube TV. No more, and even now YouTube TV has been beefing with ESPN as Google and Disney fight over which megacompany deserves the better carriage deal.
What’s the solution? I don’t know. I don’t know if there is one. The internet feels like a Pandora’s box situation in which everything has escaped in a way that it can’t be put back in and fit like it used to. We can’t go back to the days of just watching baseball on cable.
There are, I think, two totally different approaches MLB could take, and the professional soccer leagues in the United States are examples of what it looks like in practice.
On one hand, the National Women’s Soccer League chose to maximize revenue and threw consistency to the wind. Next year, the NWSL will be spread across a whopping six different media partners, from CBS to ESPN and something called “Victory+,” which sounds like a fake streaming service you’d find in a novel.
On the other hand, Major League Soccer put all its eggs in one fruit basket, so to speak. While local networks do carry some games, all games are streamable globally via the MLS Season Pass, no blackouts or other geographical limitations. Next year, there are rumors that the Season Pass will be available on Apple TV+ as part of your standard subscription.
It seems like MLB is moving towards the MLS model, as commissioner Rob Manfred has stated recently. But there are downsides there, too, which is the potential disappearance of a lot of local television money–one of clubs’ most reliable and largest sources of revenue streams. Is it worth it to have a centralized streaming model if it means clubs like the Royals are worse off financially?
For now, the status quo remains: FanDuel Sports Network will be Kansas City’s media home for another year. After that? Who knows.
