Posted by MikeT23 on 8/4/2014 9:59:00 AM (view original):
Well, MLB Network has one sport option for content.
Anyway, IMO, July/August is "baseball's time" on the calendar. While it's obvious that you and I disagree on the value of a specific game, it seems that baseball would want the most eyes possible between the end of basketball/start of football and that's on the the major network.
And FOX wants prime regular content for FS1 during that time of year. These are negotiations and there's a contract agreed to.
Here's the tradeoff MLB made - they turned 14 Saturday afternoons on FOX into 14 on FS1, and then got 26 additional national games on FS1 out of the deal, and probably considerably more money overall since the deal was for double the national games. Your can certainly argue that that is a short-sighted money grab on MLB's part since while FS1 is still relatively unknown they are losing eyes on their product and opportunity for growth, and that I wouldn't necessarily disagree with. It may very well be a bad approach long term.
But that's not where this started - you presented soccer on FOX vs. baseball on FS1 as some statement about how FOX feels relatively about the two sports right now, and that's just not true. I'll have to find the soccer numbers to verify, but I'm pretty sure Yanks/Sox would have done better for them. But FS1 taking off is worth way more to FOX than getting marginally higher ratings on FOX in July/Aug.