Major League Baseball’s offseason is normally filled with hot-stove anticipation, speculation, storylines and contractual drama, but baseball heads into 2022 with a couple of worrisome big-picture issues.
One immediate concern is the next labor deal. The other, which we’ll focus on here, is the future of the regional sports network ecosystem that’s financially underpinned MLB (and NBA and NHL) team economics for decades.
That the pay-TV (cable and satellite) RSN model is in flux because of cord-cutting, the rise of streaming services, and carriage disputes isn’t new. The pandemic, however, accelerated those trends and hastened the need for a stable new-normal so that the money continues to flow uninterrupted.
“Winter is…