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    • Where will the Milwaukee Brewers air in 2025?
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    Where will the Milwaukee Brewers air in 2025?

    Madoc Meredith Posted on

    Diamond Sports Group, which broadcasts Milwaukee Brewers games under the Bally Sports Wisconsin banner, announced Wednesday its intention to stop broadcasting games for the vast majority of Major League Baseball teams in its jurisdiction, including the Brewers.

    Evan Drellich of The Athletic first reported and then explained the details of Diamond’s maneuver. He noted that teams would have to renegotiate their contracts to stay with Diamond, with the exception of the Atlanta Braves.

    The development is part of Chapter 11 bankruptcy court proceedings. The Brewers’ contract with Diamond was set to expire after the 2024 season anyway, but the organization said it plans to stop broadcasting all of its teams under its umbrella except the Braves. At least for now.

    Brewers owner Mark Attanasio explained the three options the Brewers have to air games in 2025. Here’s what fans should know about the latest developments.

    “If we’re trying to take a step back from a macro perspective, we need to be able to make our games available to a much larger percentage of the addressable market now,” he said. “Only 20% of our television area can watch our games, so that’s not great. And (20-35%) is probably average for all major league teams. So if we do something with MLB Media, it’s going to be like this. You probably do things partially as a group and then try to piece other things together.”

    Where can fans find Milwaukee Brewers 2025 broadcasts?

    That still needs to be clarified.

    Attanasio suggested three possible paths, but in reality two.

    One would be to renegotiate with Diamond Sports and continue on a path similar to the status quo, at least for another one-year deal.

    One would be to hand the broadcasts over to Major League Baseball. The league has repeatedly stated this as its preferred approach and already operates broadcasts for the San Diego Padres, Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks. The advantage for the league would be to be able to offer uninterrupted broadcasts to fans in the market via its own MLB.TV app. The disadvantage is likely to be that clubs are paid lower broadcasting fees.

    The third option would be to “build your own” network arrangement, but that is almost certainly too difficult to implement. Teams in Houston tried to build a network to cover the Astros and Rockets nearly a decade ago, and the network quickly went bankrupt in 2014. There simply wasn’t enough demand to convince operators to offer the channel to a wide audience.

    However, the Rockets and Astros are trying again and reacquiring the station in 2023 and calling it Space City Home Network.

    Is there really a chance the Brewers will reunite with Diamond Sports Group?

    ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez quoted a source as saying that Diamond still hopes to agree to new terms with the 11 other teams and has previously submitted proposals for each team. It remains to be seen whether this is a sufficiently lucrative deal for teams to forego what appears to be MLB’s preferred overarching strategy of regaining digital rights to as many teams as possible.

    How will broadcasts change if MLB takes over?

    The broadcasts wouldn’t look or sound any different. The announcers would be mostly the same (most are team employees anyway), and it’s likely that MLB will negotiate with wireless providers to broadcast the games via satellite and cable. The channel might change and the games might be available in other locations (the Padres games are on Fubo, for example, but also on cable and satellite), but Brewers fans won’t be short of options to watch.

    Will it be more affordable for fans to watch Brewers games if MLB takes over?

    For example, Padres games can be found on the MLB.TV app for those in San Diego. Fans can pay $99 per year to get Padres games only (called the Padres.TV option), but fans who purchase the full package for $200 can also watch Padres games in the market. So fans will still have to pay if they don’t already have a cable or satellite package, but the broadcasts will be available using native MLB technology and come with the ability to purchase games that are no longer on the market.

    Will it impact the Brewers team’s payroll if MLB takes over?

    Yes, it is possible, but the extent to which this becomes a problem depends on the solutions to game distribution. Milwaukee won’t be alone in the MLB taking on this challenge, although it stands to reason that MLB’s broadcast model will yield lower rights fees than Diamond paid.

    Baseball already has a revenue-sharing policy, distributing money through lucrative national contracts to clubs that offer game packages to providers like ESPN or Apple TV+. These deals reportedly helped MLB achieve record revenue in 2022.

    In theory, the impact would be less obvious in the NBA, where a larger share of games are televised nationally and team salaries are capped by a salary cap, but the bankruptcy could reduce the league’s overall cap.

    The Brewers have already taken a lower salary share in the 2023 and 2024 seasons compared to last year and, strangely, won more games in each season than the previous year.

    Wouldn’t Amazon start broadcasting Brewers games?

    Amazon has been negotiating with Diamond to broadcast games, but it wouldn’t be significantly different from the current model. Fans would still have to pay for the broadcasts and receive special access within the Amazon app.

    (This story has been updated to add new information.)

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    Madoc Meredith
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