Padres' New TV Contract Worth $75 Mil a Year - whispers Bob Nightengale USA Today
"And even the San Diego Padres— playing in the 26th largest market in baseball — are, pending MLB approval, poised to sign a new deal with Fox Sports that will guarantee them $75 million a year for the next 20 years. The deal was confirmed by two industry executives familiar with the contract but not authorized to speak publicly about its details."
With over $100 mil in TV and revenue sharing...what should the payroll be and should any of that money be used to pay off the loans? Let the jousting begin.
4 months ago
Hormel
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1.5 billion dollars?!?!
I’m not upset, but does that seem a bit um… inflated? Anyone? I mean hell if that’s the deal Moorad can use it all he wants to pay down the loan. We’ll still have over a billion bucks in the bank at the end of the day.
Possible? Yes, however very unlikely
$75 million seems a little farfetched to me. San Diego is a medium sized television market, not too big, nor too small and up until a few years ago the highest local television station revenue (advertisement, retransmission dollars, etc.) was roughly $60 million dollars a year. There is only so much revenue that the market can generate, more so especially with sports channels since they won’t have political dollars like the local news organizations, they only generate certain type of ads mostly through local mom and pop shops with the occasional national business mixed in. That being said, and sorry for my long explanation, it could be possible that FOX is able to pay the Padres that amount of money especially if the subscriber fees for FS San Diego are high. Were the Padres not blocked by the Dodgers and Angels to the north then I guarantee you that the tv revenue would be close to or over $100 million a year (again, only if the Padres had the territorial viewing area that the angels and dodgers had. pure speculation on my part). I read recently that the Dodgers were getting about $45 million a year from FOX and that will undoubtedly go up with the new tv deal, but I can see this market squeezing out that amount of money. Providing the Padres play good baseball.
I wish it was a medium sized market
TV Market Number 28, 1,077,600
We can play with the numbers and add some shared viewing areas like Las Vegas (number 40 [737,300]), Yuma (didn’t see on there), and Palm Springs (didn’t see on there) and get up to around number 12 (1,814,900). Problem with that is that the LA, phoenix, and SF markets would also be increasing in size.
Also, there are some pretty good sized markets that are territory of another market:
Orlando-Daytona Beach (#19 [1,465,460]) mostly goes to Tampa (and a little bit is shared with Miami)
Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto (#20 [1,388,570]) goes to SF
Portland, OR (#22 [1,190,010]) goes to the hated mariners
Raleigh-Durham (#24 [1,143,420]) goes to Washington and Baltimore
Charlotte (#25 [1,140,900]) shared between Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore, and Cincinnati
Indianapolis (#26 [1,109,970]) goes to Chicago and Cincinnati
BEAT L.A.!
by kevintheoman on Feb 10, 2012 5:38 AM PST up reply actions
if we don't even bother playing with the numbers
only the following MLB cities would be a smaller market
Kansas City
Milwaukee
Cincinnati
BEAT L.A.!
by kevintheoman on Feb 10, 2012 5:44 AM PST up reply actions
Yeah, Yuma is gonna be like in the 200s or 300s if I'm not mistaken
and I’ve said before, and seems relevant again- Yuma already carries Fox Sports Arizona- and If I were to bet, I’d say no way Time Warner in Yuma carries both FS Arizona and FS San Diego. I hope I’m wrong though.
Scowling at Padres Losses since 1981
Inflation and other economic concerns I know nothing about...
20 years is a long time and 75 million dollars a year could end up being quite the bargain in 2032.
Also, it seems like the $70 million+ figure is definitely an outlier. $25 or 30 million seems to be more likely according to other reports.
I was dating this girl from Canada... after about a month I found out she didn't know what sport the Padres played, she thought "padre" was spelled p-o-d-r-a-y and she thought it was some kind of a fish. Dealbreaker.
I just read a great article in Newsweek about ESPN's exponential growth,
it gives good insight into the future of tv contracts with the various professional sports networks. I have a feeling Cox subscribers in SD will feel the impact of the new contract with the Padres.
TBD
26th largest market?
I’m obviously not an expert, so I have to ask…
Isn’t San Diego in the top 10 largest cities nationally? Do we just not have a large population in the outlying area? Or is something else at work?
You just answered your own question in part
Other problem is our TV market ends prematurely to the north and south due to the much larger LA market and the Mexican border.
Also... DESERT
there’s just not much around SD when you compare the suburban areas of most 500K+ cities.
Take Atlanta (my current city). We are the only major city for hours and the next closest MLB team is… Nationals? Reds? Rays?
Take Florida or Texas and the teams in those areas can (essentially) claim all/half of the states they are in.
We can’t even claim half of So Cal b/c of the Angels and Dodgers… both “based” out of LA now. [I believe the Angels are still the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles… or something stupid like that]
From the twitterverse
president Tom Garfinkel on XX 1090 on reported $$$ of new TV deal: “Unfortunately, that’s not real. I wish they were that high.”
Yeah, that number sounded unrealistic
$50-60m a year should be possible though.
by lemonverbena on Feb 10, 2012 9:05 AM PST up reply actions
Why do you think so?
If the Angels only got credit for LA’s 5.6 million TV households and pulled $150 million a year, that’s $26 per household. The San Diego area is 1.1 million TVs which would mean roughly a $29 million a year contract, which is what everybody else is estimating the SD deal to be.
Fair question and I'm just guessing of course
Fox will presumably be building a new Fox Sports San Diego around the Padres, so that would increase their bidding motivation. On the other hand, there can’t be that much competition for the rights, so how would the bidding go that high?
Also, has there been confirmation that the Angels deal is actually $3 billion? That number gets thrown around as fact, but not everyone agrees.
by lemonverbena on Feb 10, 2012 10:45 AM PST up reply actions
until a couple weeks ago
all the estimates were around 15-25 million.
BEAT L.A.!
by kevintheoman on Feb 10, 2012 9:56 AM PST up reply actions
Nah it'll be the 30-40 that has been previously reported. Which is realistically what it should be
The Angels TV deal is so outside the realm of the sane it’s not even funny.
by athletics68 on Feb 10, 2012 10:58 AM PST up reply actions
There could be an up-front bonus, which would lower the annual value
The Rangers got a big chunk of cash to start with, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Angels got one too. It also makes sense from a market standpoint, at least to me. If the Rangers and Angels are worth $3-3.5 billion each over 20 years, and the Dodgers are worth $4+ billion, then you’d figure a mid-market team like the Padres or Mariners would be worth something like $1.5 billion (about half) over the same period.
Just for reference, rumors about the Angels’ deal started circulating back in the winter of 2010 and the team kept quiet about it. Then, it suddenly became official with Pujols/Wilsion Day. It’s quite possible the Padres’ brass is just being quiet about this, and that the average annual value (bonus included) comes out to $75 million.
Personally, I hope it happens. As an Angels fan who’s been living in SD since 2006, it would be nice to have another legit team nearby that wouldn’t test my loyalties. It would also be cool if the Padres could hold onto their talent and cease trading it away to teams I hate (see: Boston Red Sox).
Scioscialist Party of America - Redistributing your defense since 2000.
by Commander_Nate on Feb 10, 2012 9:37 AM PST up reply actions
Firstly, the Padres aren't mid-market.
Secondly, Adrian was never going to stay a Padre. The Padres are never going to be able to pay a player that much. And frankly, looking at the rosters for the last 10 years, I’m hard-pressed to find a star they traded too soon. Adrian and Latos were the first to go before they were past their prime, and only one of those was a payroll issue.
by Darklighter on Feb 10, 2012 10:48 AM PST up reply actions 1 recs
These new TV contracts are going to kill parity
And our contract sounds horrible. $75 million a year may or may not be about right… but this is forward looking… for 20 years. That’s just going to kill our ability to compete once everyone else renews their agreements AND they will get much higher than what we get. We are near the bottom, so whatever amount we get, others will get MUCH MUCH more.
The Angels (potentially) just bought the AL west with their agreement. The Dodgers’ new agreement will (potentially) allow them to buy the NL west in a couple of years, once it kicks in.
As for the $70 million, it could be real. Sports shows have demonstrated the most resilience to declining TV audiences in recent years. PEOPLE WANT TO WATCH SPORTS live. You can record a comedy/drama/show/movie and watch it later, and people do…and then skip commercials. But lots of us watch sports live and that equals major money.
As for these sports networks, I don’t know the details of the contract, but it isn’t just for the SD area, they will likely have the ability to show the game outside of SD if the network affiliate is broadcasting the game in other areas of the southwest that does not conflict with a Dodgers/Angels/etc… game.
At least, that would make sense to me if I were a sports network OR if I were a MLB executive wanting to make money. Have baseball games on as much as possible, but give the “home teams” priority viewing.
There is this huge change brewing in the “local sports network” business where “local” doesn’t mean ONLY your city any more. If Fox Sports is able to hold the rights to multiple MLB teams covering most of CA/AZ/NV, who is going to say “oh, no, you can’t broadcast that Padres game at 4pm and then the Dodgers game at 7pm”???
you assume wrong if you think Selig can put together a blackout policy that makes any sort of sense.
I live in Vegas. It’s hell. Blacked out for six teams (SD, LAA, LAD, SF, OAK, AZ). SD likely will be satelitte only starting this year (don’t know if I’ll need to purchase the extra sports pack). AZ is satellite only and requires purchasing the extra sports pack. SF and OAK are on satellite only but are on the low tiers. LAA and LAD are available on all providers on low tiers.
I sort of rather if Selig REMOVED the padres from the Vegas market and I could just get mlb.tv for $125 a year. That’s money that could go STRAIGHT to the league/team instead of going through a middleman.
BEAT L.A.!
by kevintheoman on Feb 10, 2012 10:09 AM PST up reply actions
I'm also a little bit surprised...
that Colorado isn’t in the Vegas Blackout area
Scowling at Padres Losses since 1981
That I think everyone can agree on
Parity is going out the window with these new deals. And it’ll bite baseball in the ass during the next CBA. We’ll have a lockout or strike if these numbers keep spiraling out of control in the bigger markets.
by athletics68 on Feb 10, 2012 10:59 AM PST up reply actions
Honestly, I don't know that it makes much of a difference
If it’s $50 million or $75 million, it’s going to be peanuts compared to what the Dodgers, Giants, and Rockies re-up for. The number won’t change our position in the payroll hierarchy, because other teams are still going to pull in that much more than us. The only thing that will keep us competitive is take advantage of areas that big market teams ignore / undervalue. . .i.e., the draft, international prospects, etc. Outside the box (sorry for the cliche) ideas would also be welcome. At least until I make my first billion and buy the team.
Garfinkle was on the Dave & Jeff Show this morning
and said it would be closer to $25-$30 mil a year (double what they are getting now from channel 4).
by Grey Suit on Feb 10, 2012 10:05 AM PST reply actions 1 recs
in a radio interview with Bob Nightengale...
he said teams were hiding the real value of these new TV deals – Rangers $3 bil, Angels $3.5 bil…
When you add the signifigant upfront payment (which MLB feared would be used to pay off the loan to Moores)
and the escalating payments over 20 years…it would average $75 mil a year. So yes, Garfinkle might be correct for the actual payment in years 1 – 3, but he is probably leaving out a good chunk of the value. Also, don’t forget, the Padres will own a part of Fox Sports San Diego.
Nightengale radio interview – 8:50 mark for discussion of Padres TV deal
On the other hand, you have different fingers.
It may be an escalating value contract.
But there’s no way it goes from 30 million to the 120 or so it’ll need to be in year 20 to average out.
20 years is a long time
$120 mil in 20 years probably will seem cheap.
Also, we don’t know what the up front payment was. However, it was enough to make MLB shut down the transfer of ownership.
On the other hand, you have different fingers.
any tv deal is a good deal at this point
considering halfway into a 20 year deal nobody will be watching baseball on cable. if i were a betting man i’d say streaming is going to out-do cable before 2020. if the contract is limited to the TV rights then sign whatever deal you can now and get that money.
by iheartyourfart on Feb 10, 2012 12:55 PM PST reply actions 2 recs
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