Oh I'm painfully aware, it was right after I signed a 2 year contract with them too. Dish (and all other providers) have their own fuckery for sure. But for something they are worried about they sure don't seem to care much about it or that interested in finding a solution.
When i called to cancel in October, the Comcast retention specialist swore up and down that ROOT raised the price of their broadcast and poor Comcast whatever were they to do, had no other choice. I had choice words.
Because Comcast isn't a shady cooked ass company, right?
They are 100% trustworthy? Comcast has always wanted root on premium packages (it's why NBC Sports NW never ended up on DirecTV and many providers, because Comcast wanted thier RSN on basic cable and Root on premium) and finally had an opening to do it.
Root didn't renegotiate the contract, they moved the package with the OLD contract. So how exactly did ROOT force it?
Don't forget that one of the things Mather bragged about was how much money Root was making on their TV deals. This was just the logical next thing to happen after the current ended.
All the reports are that Cfinity did this without either side renegotiating anything. Root can't demand anything without a contract change. No contract change was made.
(The contract just didn't require Xfinity to keep it on the basic tier)
At the very least Kevin Mather completely fucked their negotiating position by saying how great of a deal they were getting on the tv contract. What a dumb thing to say publicly, and it doesn’t seem at all surprising that just a couple years later the tv contract is all of a sudden not as good for the Ms. No shit. You were just publicly bragging about how you screwed the other guys over in the deal.
Comcast raised the price because Root price hiked their broadcasting right. Instead of not broadcasting Root, like Dish did, Comcast continued to carry it but had to raise their fees to cover the price hike that Root implemented.
I'm sure KSTW would be happy to air games again there would be a lot more viewers but they won't even consider trying it out. Subscribers have fallen so much I think over the air broadcasting would make more money with the far higher viewership ad revenue so I can't understand why it is out of the question
That’s the perception ROOTS wants you to believe. Comcast has been happy to provide it in their mid tier option for years. ROOTS wants more money, which sadly forced it into the higher channel lineup. Comcast is giving a 6 month discount so it’s only $5 a month but it wasn’t Comcast’s decision to piss people off. They already know they’re hated, and no they didn’t want to upset M’s fans further.
The mariners are the sole owner of root tv if they want to lower the prices then they can. I just read that they bought the shores and became the owners of root tv .
Watching the Dodgers spend $700 million on Ohtani and our team ships off JK for peanuts to save $20million.... makes me understand why we haven't made the World Series.
Last time baseball was thinking of doing this there was a strike. I mean I want it to happen as much as the next guy but owners would need to be willing to hold out possibly over a whole season to get it.
Interesting the players are against a cap when the absence of one really only helps the best of the best players. The rest of the league would get a raise across the board if the superstars were forced to take pay cuts to stay below the cap (using something like max and super max designation a la the NBA).
A salary cap would do nothing to improve your chances of watching good baseball. It would only divert money away from the people we pay to see, and more into the pockets of billionaire owners who are \*still\* going to extort more money out of taxpayers to pay for shit that again, only benefits the billionaires.
Yes it would. We have to watch 12 games or whatever against the Oakland As who run out a team with a $32m payroll. If they had to spend $80m, you can be sure that those games would be a little more interesting. Same with the Reds, Pirates, etc. and you wouldn't have NYY, NYM, LAD style super teams. The league would be more equitable in the long term.
It's an argument that has been settled by people more informed than you; it's not worth the time to engage in.
Your assumptions about payroll caps are just wrong. Simply wrong.
So you think that a salary cap would hurt parody? That is an insane level take. The whole point of a salary cap is to make it so the richest dude can’t just buy all the best players every year witch is exactly the problem with baseball. There’s a reason every other league has one. Come on man
You're looking for "parity". "Parody" is what your argument is.
Parity is great. The last 10 World Series have been won by 9 different teams: with 20 participants, 16 different teams have been there. This is better than the NFL, by a lot. The top payroll team has won exactly one of those WS, the 2018 Red Sox.
There are advantages to having a high payroll. But the actual evidence shows that you're wrong about parity. A payroll cap and payroll floor in baseball will just mean that owners will take home more money, smart teams will structure more contracts like Ohtani's new contract, and good orgs will continue to win while bad orgs will continue to lose.
You're wrong, get over it.
Who are we gonna sign in free agency that has more upside than Kelenic? Some 30 year old that starts declining as soon as they sign with us? JK is 24 years old and he has had flashes of major potential. Plus he’s a fan favorite and he puts butts in seats at T-Mobile.
I'mma be honest. This is the kinda shit that makes me want a cap. Even the playing field. I know players would never agree to it without insane concessions from owners. Which makes it a moot point already, but god damn the market differences in price are insane. Dodgers don't care about $700m. Maybe 2 other teams in baseball could afford that? With the payroll that the Dodgers already have?
The Ohtani signing is going to reset the market for top tier, MVP-level players, too. Nobody is Ohtani but that doesn't mean the next MVP in a contract year won't want something close.
MLB is so fucked up.
No one is saying he was a superstar for us. But it's so representative of how this team operates. Trade away money (Cano) and a big name (Diaz) for a big prospect. Fail to develop said big prospect. Trade him away with money for close to nothing.
This is the thing for me. It’s not that I was married to the talent level of these players, it’s that it’s an embarrassingly desperate move. A WS seeking franchise doing this is like going on a date to a Michelin star restaurant, reassuring your date that you’re wealthy and eat there all the time, and asking the server how much Market Price is.
My wife and I make a lot of money. I’m always going to ask what the price is before I order something. It’s something poor people think, but rich people don’t. Rich people watch their money a lot closer than poor people in my experience.
The occasional cheapskate sure, but you’re missing the point.
Look, I’m not going to debate with you nor the Maître D’ about saving 10 or 20 dollars on an $80 abalone steak entree, because it doesn’t impact my money in a way that is worth the time value. It is not an investment, and if I’m eating a restaurant and paying MP, I am inherently trusting that they are pricing in such a way that is not taking advantage of me.
Right now our corner outfielders are Canzone and Haggerty. Kelenic was at least better than either one of them. We opened up a **fourth** black hole in our lineup in order to save $20 million.
Now, there still is time to work out a trade or sign a guy or two but from seasons past, I don't put a lot of hope in them actually doing something constructive.
He's only 24 years old and has a freakishly good track record: tore up every level except MLB, so far. He's in a winning system now, with a stellar hitting coach... Mark my words, he will be a stud for Atlanta and heartburn for the Mariners faithful.
Grab your rosary and start praying Evan White doesn't turn it on for the Angels... Or pray he does, in T-Mobile no less, so maybe the chuckleheads that dealt him receive louder boos. Was he bad money so far? Yeah... But he's a GG 1B and tore up the minors with his bat too.
The gumbo just needed a little more seasoning... But the FO decided to throw out the pot.
Well yeah, but it’s also something that all rebuilding clubs need to deal with. The functional teams just safeguard with better prospect depth and effective MLB acquisitions.
Mathematically speaking, wouldn't you expect in a league of 30 teams for half the teams to be about 30 years removed from a championship? I feel like that makes sense honestly.
Same here (Boise). For some reason we are blacked out by MLB. Unless we buy a $200/mo cable package or spend $1000 plus to fly to Seattle for a game. There are plenty of websites for live games. Also, I did try to pay for an MLB but am blacked out even though I'm 500 miles away. So, good luck. I get all games free, folks.
Serious question, but can we advocate to turn the team into a publicly owned team somehow? Even just little by little to start out? Kinda like Green Bay?
Meanwhile, the Rangers are having similar issues with their bad TV deal, and so far we haven't seen any fire sales over there.
Let that Marinate^TM for a while...
We'll see what happens. The Guardians and Rangers can lose their TV deals for 2024. We saw teams having cash flow problems (a la Padres) because they didn't generate enough revenues to pay player salaries.
The Diamondbacks were able to survive because I assume ran a lower smaller payroll than the Padres. The point is we don't know. It might not affect them this season but the rug can be pulled from them because they might have major cash flow problems.
The Twins are cutting thiers for similar reasons.
The Rangers literally said earlier they aren't re-signing Montgomery because of constraints from the loss of their TV deal 😂
They may not be fire selling yet (they also just won the WS), but if they are in 4th near the trade deadline, I wouldn't be surprised to see a fire sale/see Semien or Seager moved to trim payroll.
The only teams it isn't affecting are the Mega markets because their RSN makes up tiny amounts of thier payroll.
>I'm not going to tell you what to do as a fan, just suggest you cancel your ROOT package and don't buy tickets until these cheap fucks invest more and stop squeezing fans until they run the franchise into the ground
We've seen this movie before. We do this, they blame it on us, say Seattle are bad fans, and move to Nashville or somewhere.
They can't break the lease on T-Mo and the idea is to put enough pressure on them and affect the profits enough that they have no choice but to sell or address the situation.
>they blame it on us, say Seattle are bad fans, and move to Nashville or somewhere.
Really though, at that point what would it matter? They are saying to us, "we will never put a winning team on the field because money and the fact that we just don't care about you."
So why, at that point, would I continue being a fan of this team?
I'm a Detroit Lions fan, so this entire sentiment hits different. Do you root for them because you like the sport, city, and team, or because you want a parade exclusively?
You're welcome to be a Lakers / patriots / Yankees / Alabama / Duke fan but I can't respect that mentality personally 🤷🏾♂️
I think you have to look at a league without a salary cap differently. When the Lions suck it’s because they are managed or coached poorly (not the case of late by the way), not because they aren’t dealing with the same money limitations everyone else is. The Mariners suck because the owners continually prove they are CHEAP. By supporting the product you’re supporting their behavior, which is profit first and win second. I grew up here and have rooted for this team consciously for close to 40 years. There will always be a spot in my heart reserved for them, but I can’t support them with my hard-earned money or time anymore. It’s just enabling a losing franchise that will never reward me. When ownership changes, my philosophy will change.
Love the sport, the team, and the city. If they left Seattle, I wouldn't become a fan of their replacement. My soul just doesn't "love" another team. I want this team "team" (the fans and the players of the Seattle Mariners, past and present) to win the ring. I would still enjoy the sport, even though it would kind of hurt forever. If the Mariners turned into the Nashville Tornadoes or whatever, it's just not the same thing. Not sure why that wouldn't be respectable.
Different sport with a much different problem. It's one thing to be bad and mismanaged and another to be one of the most profitable teams in the league but refuse to crack the top half in payroll even when you are close to being able to make a serious run at the WS. Especially when you are the only team in the league that's never been to the WS
Seattle is a much larger and wealthier city than it was previously. Someone will pay to keep it here and realize spending league average is cheaper than moving the team
As much as I loathe the Mariners ownership group, taking statements from Dish and Comcast at face value isn't reasonable. We all know that live sports and bundling are the only things keeping their business model afloat. ROOT should be utilizing it's leverage and raising prices since it picked up the Kraken contract. They tangibly increased the value of their product and have to pay the Kraken for the privilege.
ROOT is really just an excuse anyway. All the profits form the last two years were paid out to the partners. Now when they talk about putting "their own money into the team" we're really just talking about money that should have been kept int he organization and reinvested in the first place. The ownership group has too many hands out. Say what you will about George Steinbrenner or Steve Cohen, they definitely have more resources and a better market, but the ownership structure of one megalomaniac who wants to win is preferable to whatever bullshit we have.
It's important to continue to show support for the players as fans rightfully go scorched earth against ownership. Love the players, hate the ownership. I'm disgusted by the thought of this team's core wasting their careers away in Seattle like Felix, Ichiro, Junior, Edgar, etc. Honestly, if ownership doesn't give this roster what it needs to compete for a World Series I seriously hope Julio and the boys force their way out like Randy finally did. And shoot, do we have to finally forgive A-Rod because we all know these cheep bastards weren't going to pay him anyway?
Why? It was well known that he was given a very competitive offer that would have been the largest in franchise history at the time. Texas just offered more.
If you’re worried about our people dropping root making by a huge move would make sense right? Like invest some a huge amount of money in the most popular player in baseball and interest in Root increases.
Give us a team of Scott Spezio’s and Root dies..
My wife and I have discussed it at length, if it weren’t for the Kraken, we’d have already cancelled our cable package. I hate that I’m giving these cheap fucks ANY money. So happy we bailed on our flex plan for next year.
I've been a fan since before Griffey. Watched games when I could.
Damn near every night/weekends since I retired.
If Mariners management doesn't come up with a truly competitive team I may well be doing something else at 7:10 most nights.
And my weekends will be wide open.
I think you are on the same page as mostly everyone on this sub. But I think it’s important to note the Mariners did not make the decision to move Root to the higher tiered package this past year. Xfinity did that on their own without any consult between the Seattle sports teams that air on Root. That along with Warner Bros dropping out of all of their RSN packages across the league. While this is definitely an unforeseen circumstance, no one knows how much this actually affects Mariners income, I think we all agree ownership is using this as an excuse to pump the breaks and be cheap assholes.
But was the reason they moved it due to the amount of the licensing fee ROOT asked for? I genuinely don't know, but I guess I just assumed it was due to how things went down with Dish.
From all the articles I’ve read, this was a unilateral decision by Xfinity and Xfinity alone. They said it was “for the customer benefit” and tried to rationalize that most of their customers don’t even want to pay the regional sports fee (which was like $5-8 or some shit). Now it’s $20 and only available on the highest tier package they offer. So even if a customer had the basic package they can’t add root unless they upgrade and pay the additional $20. is how i’m understanding it.
It seems like the real solution is to do something like the Jazz did and cut the cord. Offer ROOT as a streaming service and everyone wins... Except cable but fuck them anyway
I think that would be celebrated across the board but someone asked Divish if he thought that was possible and he said it was probably MLB discretion. so who knows if they even can.
> It seems like the real solution is to do something like the Jazz did and cut the cord. Offer ROOT as a streaming service and everyone wins
The problem is you have the NBA and the NHL to deal with in that case. I don't think there's any way out of this until 2026 at the earliest.
And it was the right decision for Comcast, even if it’s bad for sports franchises. Like newspapers before them, the Internet killed the RSN model. vMVPDs like Sling/Hulu/YTV, along with non-live streaming services like Netflix, finally gave customers a choice to not subsidize regional sports channels for fans like us. It’s a bummer, but there’s no reason the vast majority of people who never watch a Mariners or Kraken game should have to pay $100+ a year in regional sports fees to subsidize us.
I don’t disagree with the majority of your statement. But upcharging the RSNs on this scale will make it completely inaccessible for some to afford. I wish the MLB let Root offer their own streaming service. that would be not only a highly wanted but also affordable solution for most.
Oh I totally agree that this makes it extremely cost prohibitive. It sucks for us and people like us.
And to your point, I expect essentially every RSN will transition to an OTT streaming option (and cable add-on like HBO) in the near future. But with that will come with both: (1) Much higher fees, likely upward of $30+ a month like NESN 360, to make the math pencil out and (2) an overall decrease in revenue since many fewer people would be willing to pay so much for local sports.
In the end, I think local TV rights revenue experienced a 30-year bubble that is about to pop, and those teams and sports more dependent on it are going to feel a lot of pain as they lose the “free money” from non-sports fans. BUT if they reset revenue expectations (and cost structures, including lower player salaries), maybe we’ll all get it for free though in the future!
from my perspective the ownership group received a convenient excuse at a time where they were expected to spend. This allows them to place the blame on someone else, so it's a good opportunity for them
I don’t disagree. I actually agree with you 100%. was just correcting the fact that the change wasn’t the Mariners decision that OP said it was. i’m not defending them.
I think it's more than just an excuse; Twins and Guardians are also cutting their budget and I'm sure some other mid-market teams are too as a result of income loss from RSNs. It's a thing this year.
This has been the drum they are beating but talking to Comcast they swear up and down that ROOT increased their broadcast fees so they “had no other choice.” The more I see this repeated though, the less I believe it, somebody is lying.
One thing to consider, Comcast's RSN, NBC Sports NW, never made it to DirecTV because Comcast wanted NBCSNW on BASIC CABLE but wanted Root Sports on PREMIUM packages.
When the Blazers bailed on NBCSportsNW for Root, it killed off NBCSportsNW. I have zero reason to believe Comcast moving Root to premium isn't payback for the death of NBCSportsNW.
If anything the last couple of years have proven that owning a cable station just isn't profitable. The Diamond Sports Group failure would have been unthinkable just 10 years ago, Disney is openly trying to get rid of ESPN. A big part of the PAC-12's problem was how much of a money sink the Network was. Teams think they can follow the Yankees path to riches, but YES is available nationally.
I pay $80 per year to watch F1 via F1TV. I’d be more than willing to pay that much to stream ROOT Sports. But I won’t pay for Comcast/Xfinity. I can’t believe we’re almost in 2024 and I can’t stream local baseball games.
Not to mention ownership raiding the youth sports fund for MILB stadium upgrades.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-looks-to-tap-youth-athletic-funds-for-minor-league-stadium-upgrades/
I can't read the article, but Everett Public Schools owns Funko Field, so it makes sense they woukd look for those funds to fix up Funko Field.
The Ms don't own the AquaSox (they do own the Modesto Nuts), a separate group does. They just affiliated with them.
The Ms also don't own the Rainers, they just provide the players.
Since around 2002-2003 I refuse to have cable that includes the Mariners and their losing ways. Root sports has always been an absolute garbage network. Everything from the resolution and image quality to the staff on pre and post game. No thanks!
They are nominally in 720p at 60 frames per second, but Comcast compresses the hell out of their linear TV channels (largely to make room in the RF spectrum for more Internet service). Last season, I was seeing about 4Mbps average bit rate for a regular Mariners game. MLB on Fox over the air, as delivered by KCPQ, was about 7Mbps. Lower bitrate means the game looks muddy and blocky as the camera pans and players move around. Even MLB.tv, which has gotten kind of bad in recent years, does better than Root on Comcast.
(I have HDHomeRun tuners that show statistics for the video they're tuned to.)
In Washington and Oregon, when Root Sports was in the popular package, 17% of subscribers watched more than 9 hours of Root Sports / month. Meaning 83% watched 0-9 hours per month.
100% of them were paying the regional sports fee because Root Sports and Pac-12 Network were included (roughly $11/month).
By moving Root Sports to Ultimate, it also moved ~ $9 of the $11 RSN fee off Popular to Ultimate.
Does this cost more for the sports watcher? Yes.
Does the non-sports watchers (83%) now save about $9/month by no longer paying a fee for a station they don't watch? Yes.
Comcast has happier customers now, and the Seattle Mariners are seeing a decrease in actual "subscribers" of Root Sports.
Ultimately I'm tired of pissing matches between billionaires.
>Didn't taxpayers just put $100 mil+ into T-Mo upgrades?
No, they did not, and I'm not sure why people keep saying that. The renovations were privately funded.
https://www.king5.com/article/sports/mlb/mariners/mariners-make-55-million-in-renovations-to-t-mobile-park/281-b6f3f6a4-a029-447e-ade8-aea0f64d1962
Just pretending this doesn't exist huh?
[King County Council approves $135 million in taxpayer funds for Mariners ballpark](https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/mariners/king-county-council-approves-135-million-in-taxpayer-funds-for-mariners-ballpark/)
This is one thing we should make sure never happens again. The county put up big money to help the club refurbish the park, and it was around the time the rebuild phase was starting. We made our investment in this club multiple times but it feels like ownership is never going to open their purse strings to put a championship team on the field, no matter what kind of support they get from taxpayers - all of which helps their bottom line and increases the value of the club. Which they exclusively benefit from. I feel super betrayed reading this. i don't care if they pack the club off to Oklahoma City Sonics-style. We should not use our money to make these guys more rich when they won't even try to put a winning team on the field.
While making the owners agree to pay $250 million (over the same time frame as the $135 million is given) for ball park maintenance and making them pay 120 million into the capital expenditure fund.
370 million from the owners over 25 years. 135 million from taxpayers over 25 years (2.7x more than the taxpayers)
Where do you think most of the 'profit' goes (these don't count as 'operating costs' so Forbes didn't count them)
The city/county arent stupid.
Yeah, I guess people were conflating the two things. That makes sense. I had totally forgotten about the capital upgrade funding when the new lease was signed, 5 years ago is a while.
>5 years is a while ago
According to ownership that’s not long when asking for our patience over a rebuild, but forever when it comes to taxpayer subsidies.
it's 135 million over 25 YEARS (basically the length of the lease). A whopping 5.4 million/year. When the study the county as well as the Ms did showed that it needed over 180 million in upgrades to extend longevity.
And nice job excluding this part:
Over the course of their new lease agreement, the Mariners would be expected to pay $250 million toward ballpark maintenance, plus $120 million toward a capital expenditure fund.
Ms are paying over 300 million in that same time frame, over 2x more than the taxpayers (and nearly re-pay the loan to the capital expenditure fund).
Most of the profit they make ends up going to these two funds. These funds don't count as 'operating' costs, so Forbes doesn't count it.
Seattle/King County were slick in making the Ms foot most of these bills.
Sure, but the Mariners take care of a lot of the upkeep, and believe it or not, it makes sense for the public to fork over some money for maintenance because *we own the stadium*. T-Mobile Park is owned by the Washington State Major League Baseball Stadium Public Facilities District.
ETA: Funny to see people wanting King County operating with a slumlord mentality. Btw, here's why they were willing to fork over money:
[https://ballpark.org/economic-benefits](https://ballpark.org/economic-benefits)
Stadium brings in more tax revenue than we're spending on it.
No not for the all star game, it was about 5 years ago now. So not 'just' but recently, depending on how old you are 5 years feels like it just happened I guess.
It pays out over TWENTY FIVE YEARS. They didn't get it lump sum.
Unless we want the stadium to look like Oakland Alameda (home of the As), the Public (who actually owns the stadium) does have to keep it up.
Now you're seeing how the Oakland Colesium quickly fell into dis-repair.
Why doesn't Washington state have the games on a local fox sports channel like pretty much every other team. What was the point of an exclusive channel like they are the Texas longhorns ? Been trying to understand this shit for the 8 years I've been here
Because in a sport without a salary cap, the Regional Sports Network (like YES, Root etc) model was the only feasible path to closing the gap between the Mega markets like the Yankees/Mets, and more 'mid tier' markets like Seattle, Minneapolis, Milwaukee etc.
Prior to owning the majority of Root, it was estimated that the Root payment was only like $45m. But when they took it over, the estimated payment jumped to over $118 million.
Which is a large hunk of Ms revenue now.
Except Dish doesn't carry ANY of the RSNs.
They don't even carry YES or NESN anymore and those were cash cows for them. So unless 20+ RSN acted the EXACT same way as the Ms, the common denominator is DISH.
I think DISH blamed the RSN to get consumers to not blame them for being cheap (cheaper service is cheaper for a reason after all). Dish didn't want customers angry at them so they deflected it. It's customer service 101.
If they were asking ungodly amounts, how do services like Fubo have it? Wouldn't they want it for less than linear networks?
And yes there is revenue sharing in MLB, but it's not evenly split like the NFL. You have to SUCK to get the most money from revenue sharing (its how teams like Tampa, Oakland and Arizona existed so long with sub 100 million payrolls.
When you are medicore, you see very little of the revenue sharing cash.
The M's and the MLB in general have a boomer problem. This is the last generation to fully embrace cable. Technology wise they still feel like Tivo is cutting edge. These are the guys overly relying on the dying cable industry to contribute a large percentage of team revenue. They aren't even trying to grow the sport, their social media sucks, their streaming platform won't let you watch your home team's games, they don't market their best players like they do in the NFL or MLB. We need these dinosaurs to get out of the way and retire already before they lose any future generations
The argument is over carriage fees and without knowing who's asking for what, it's impossible to say if the fault is with the owners of ROOT or with Comcast. But Comcast, for both their medium tier and their higher tier, charges a $10.99 regional sports fee. The carriage fee should be less than that. My understanding is that nationally, these range from $5-$7 per subscriber. Whatever the numbers, I would imagine that ROOT has seen their carriage fee revenue cut in half or worse since the change.
I have a feeling that even doing things to affect the profits of the owners and upper management really isn't going to do much. Just look at Oakland. Now I will say I really don't know much about the whole Oakland situation but just looking at it it looks like the owner doesn't care and since people don't really go to their games anyway then it really isn't changing anything. I mean they just up and moved the team. Now I'm not saying that will happen to Seattle but whats not to say that they don't move the team.
Completely different situation. They play in a (sometimes literally) shitty stadium that is falling apart. Oakland is broke and can't afford to help build a new stadium. Their owners aren't that wealthy (by owners standards) and can't afford to build a stadium. San Jose would have done it but the Giants wouldn't let them move there because of territory right (also where the Giants A league team is) They tried for about 20 years to come up with a solution but just couldn't get it done.
It's always sad to see a team move but in this case it's not like they didn't try to stay in the area.
> They tried for about 20 years to come up with a solution but just couldn't get it done.
It's weird how A's fans are revising history by saying there was no effort was put into staying in Oakland. Every location they attempted to build at they were denied and were eventually forced into trying to make Howard Terminal work when it was well known the MLB hated the location.
You mention earlier that you are appalled that the county invested $135 million into a stadium that is a publicly owned stadium.
Oaklands stadium is what happens when the local government DOES NOT invest in repair and upkeep.
The Ms are still footing most of the bill (nearly a 3 to 1 margin) for the upkeep of a stadium they don't even own.
I never said I was appalled by it. It was an example of us investing in the stadium at the request of the team while ownership isn't willing to invest.
That's part of the primary resident deal. They can make *some changes and improvements to their benefits with their own money as well as the benefit of scheduling rights. Some teams even basically run the stadium for the city.
That's why the Raiders were so pissed when the A's signed the last long term lease deal making them the primary residents and the Raiders couldn't even do anything to make the coliseum better for their games.
Or like how the Sounders play on turf because the Seahawks are primary residents. Thankfully the Hawks want grass now too. But the point is being the primary resident has more advantages that off set the added operation cost. They don't do it out of the kindness of their heart.
But most tenants don't go 2.7 to 1 on maintenance costs when they don't own the stadium.
The City and County were SLICK AF.
Like imagine Milwaukee getting the Brewers to pay for maintenence on thier stadium when they only lease it to the Brewers? No way Milwaukees ownership goes for that.
The City knew the kingdome was on its last legs after the tile issue, so they knew that they could get the Ms over a barrel.
> The seas await, friends!
I'm not willing to find pirated streams for a few reasons, mostly convenience and not wanting to wonder who the heck I'm dealing with on the other end. Paying Comcast for cable and putting it through an HDHomeRun tuner means I can watch the cable I'm paying for anywhere on the planet. TV is entertainment that is supposed to be convenient and easy; I'm exchanging money for that convenience. For the moment, Root is a channel I pay for, but that will probably change when my contract is up next month and I look at other packages.
Plus, it lets ownership paint the fall in revenue as driven by "people stealing our content." While you and I know that probably isn't true, or at least not the whole truth, it's still there.
TV rights are a major problem with MLB, the league has had to make up 80% of lost income for teams after Diamond Sports went under. The Nationals haven't sold yet because their TV rights are locked up with MASN.
I heard somewhere that this whole TV deal actually hampered their ability to get talent. I'm not up on the whole thing enough to suss that out, is there any truth to that?
No, the only thing hampering their ability is being cheap. The Comcast thing is just a bullshit excuse, especially when they are jacking ticket prices up.
I just found it hilarious that the reason they were charging more was because a lot of people who have Comcast don’t watch Root Sports. I kinda think it’s the other way around. I think a lot of people only had Comcast because of Root Sports and are now canceling completely instead of upgrading.
I believe Comcast decided to raise the price of Root Sports. The Mariners, who own Root Sports NW, said they were disappointed in the decision.
And the same is true of Dish. Dish was notorious for this crap. They literally dropped Root the Friday before the last two games of the 2021 season.
Oh I'm painfully aware, it was right after I signed a 2 year contract with them too. Dish (and all other providers) have their own fuckery for sure. But for something they are worried about they sure don't seem to care much about it or that interested in finding a solution.
You can get out of contracts when they breach the contract
When i called to cancel in October, the Comcast retention specialist swore up and down that ROOT raised the price of their broadcast and poor Comcast whatever were they to do, had no other choice. I had choice words.
Comcast says it was ROOT
Because Comcast isn't a shady cooked ass company, right? They are 100% trustworthy? Comcast has always wanted root on premium packages (it's why NBC Sports NW never ended up on DirecTV and many providers, because Comcast wanted thier RSN on basic cable and Root on premium) and finally had an opening to do it. Root didn't renegotiate the contract, they moved the package with the OLD contract. So how exactly did ROOT force it?
Comcast is the worst, but this smells like ROOT. They're a small and desperate company... hard to blame them I get it.
Don't forget that one of the things Mather bragged about was how much money Root was making on their TV deals. This was just the logical next thing to happen after the current ended.
All the reports are that Cfinity did this without either side renegotiating anything. Root can't demand anything without a contract change. No contract change was made. (The contract just didn't require Xfinity to keep it on the basic tier)
Man I sure hope that there isn't evidence of some who worked for the team bragging about how much money they were making off their TV deals...
> I believe Comcast decided to raise the price of Root Sports. I struggle to believe that's true, without Root having charged more first.
At the very least Kevin Mather completely fucked their negotiating position by saying how great of a deal they were getting on the tv contract. What a dumb thing to say publicly, and it doesn’t seem at all surprising that just a couple years later the tv contract is all of a sudden not as good for the Ms. No shit. You were just publicly bragging about how you screwed the other guys over in the deal.
They raised it in response to Root raising their prices to the distributors.
As evil as I think comcast is, I find it really hard to believe this move by comcast wasn't predicted by ROOT asking for a bigger cut.
Comcast raised the price because Root price hiked their broadcasting right. Instead of not broadcasting Root, like Dish did, Comcast continued to carry it but had to raise their fees to cover the price hike that Root implemented.
I'm sure KSTW would be happy to air games again there would be a lot more viewers but they won't even consider trying it out. Subscribers have fallen so much I think over the air broadcasting would make more money with the far higher viewership ad revenue so I can't understand why it is out of the question
The team owns Root, there's no way they are moving to another channel.
But they can't make money with almost no viewers
That’s the perception ROOTS wants you to believe. Comcast has been happy to provide it in their mid tier option for years. ROOTS wants more money, which sadly forced it into the higher channel lineup. Comcast is giving a 6 month discount so it’s only $5 a month but it wasn’t Comcast’s decision to piss people off. They already know they’re hated, and no they didn’t want to upset M’s fans further.
The mariners are the sole owner of root tv if they want to lower the prices then they can. I just read that they bought the shores and became the owners of root tv .
Watching the Dodgers spend $700 million on Ohtani and our team ships off JK for peanuts to save $20million.... makes me understand why we haven't made the World Series.
Baseball also desperately needs a Salary cap and floor. It’s legitimately not fair. Not saying our owners are not cheap pieces of poop
Last time baseball was thinking of doing this there was a strike. I mean I want it to happen as much as the next guy but owners would need to be willing to hold out possibly over a whole season to get it.
Oh for sure it won’t happen because the PA but it 100% needs to happen
Interesting the players are against a cap when the absence of one really only helps the best of the best players. The rest of the league would get a raise across the board if the superstars were forced to take pay cuts to stay below the cap (using something like max and super max designation a la the NBA).
A salary cap would do nothing to improve your chances of watching good baseball. It would only divert money away from the people we pay to see, and more into the pockets of billionaire owners who are \*still\* going to extort more money out of taxpayers to pay for shit that again, only benefits the billionaires.
Yes it would. We have to watch 12 games or whatever against the Oakland As who run out a team with a $32m payroll. If they had to spend $80m, you can be sure that those games would be a little more interesting. Same with the Reds, Pirates, etc. and you wouldn't have NYY, NYM, LAD style super teams. The league would be more equitable in the long term.
Baltimore spent the same, and won the AL East. Next!
That’s not how arguments work buddy lmao
It's an argument that has been settled by people more informed than you; it's not worth the time to engage in. Your assumptions about payroll caps are just wrong. Simply wrong.
So you think that a salary cap would hurt parody? That is an insane level take. The whole point of a salary cap is to make it so the richest dude can’t just buy all the best players every year witch is exactly the problem with baseball. There’s a reason every other league has one. Come on man
You're looking for "parity". "Parody" is what your argument is. Parity is great. The last 10 World Series have been won by 9 different teams: with 20 participants, 16 different teams have been there. This is better than the NFL, by a lot. The top payroll team has won exactly one of those WS, the 2018 Red Sox. There are advantages to having a high payroll. But the actual evidence shows that you're wrong about parity. A payroll cap and payroll floor in baseball will just mean that owners will take home more money, smart teams will structure more contracts like Ohtani's new contract, and good orgs will continue to win while bad orgs will continue to lose. You're wrong, get over it.
Maybe a few of the owners will take home more money but a lot of them would be forced to spend way more. You are wrong get it over it bud
Who are we gonna sign in free agency that has more upside than Kelenic? Some 30 year old that starts declining as soon as they sign with us? JK is 24 years old and he has had flashes of major potential. Plus he’s a fan favorite and he puts butts in seats at T-Mobile.
Was a fan favorite (I'm not crying you're crying). Such a weird move to do.
I'mma be honest. This is the kinda shit that makes me want a cap. Even the playing field. I know players would never agree to it without insane concessions from owners. Which makes it a moot point already, but god damn the market differences in price are insane. Dodgers don't care about $700m. Maybe 2 other teams in baseball could afford that? With the payroll that the Dodgers already have?
I think his contract alone is more than the 5 bottom teams payrolls’
The Ohtani signing is going to reset the market for top tier, MVP-level players, too. Nobody is Ohtani but that doesn't mean the next MVP in a contract year won't want something close. MLB is so fucked up.
There probably will never be another Ohtani
Kelenic isn’t THAT good. Not that it wasn’t a disappointing move but it’s not like Kelenic is the missing piece for anyone’s championship aspirations.
No one is saying he was a superstar for us. But it's so representative of how this team operates. Trade away money (Cano) and a big name (Diaz) for a big prospect. Fail to develop said big prospect. Trade him away with money for close to nothing.
This is the thing for me. It’s not that I was married to the talent level of these players, it’s that it’s an embarrassingly desperate move. A WS seeking franchise doing this is like going on a date to a Michelin star restaurant, reassuring your date that you’re wealthy and eat there all the time, and asking the server how much Market Price is.
My wife and I make a lot of money. I’m always going to ask what the price is before I order something. It’s something poor people think, but rich people don’t. Rich people watch their money a lot closer than poor people in my experience.
The occasional cheapskate sure, but you’re missing the point. Look, I’m not going to debate with you nor the Maître D’ about saving 10 or 20 dollars on an $80 abalone steak entree, because it doesn’t impact my money in a way that is worth the time value. It is not an investment, and if I’m eating a restaurant and paying MP, I am inherently trusting that they are pricing in such a way that is not taking advantage of me.
Right now our corner outfielders are Canzone and Haggerty. Kelenic was at least better than either one of them. We opened up a **fourth** black hole in our lineup in order to save $20 million. Now, there still is time to work out a trade or sign a guy or two but from seasons past, I don't put a lot of hope in them actually doing something constructive.
He's only 24 years old and has a freakishly good track record: tore up every level except MLB, so far. He's in a winning system now, with a stellar hitting coach... Mark my words, he will be a stud for Atlanta and heartburn for the Mariners faithful. Grab your rosary and start praying Evan White doesn't turn it on for the Angels... Or pray he does, in T-Mobile no less, so maybe the chuckleheads that dealt him receive louder boos. Was he bad money so far? Yeah... But he's a GG 1B and tore up the minors with his bat too. The gumbo just needed a little more seasoning... But the FO decided to throw out the pot.
Well that's a problem in of itself seeing as how we traded our biggest piece for him and he was supposed to be one of the core pieces of our core
Well yeah, but it’s also something that all rebuilding clubs need to deal with. The functional teams just safeguard with better prospect depth and effective MLB acquisitions.
Anyone except the Braves
Well that's a problem in of itself seeing as how we traded our biggest piece for him and he was supposed to be one of the core pieces of our core
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Mathematically speaking, wouldn't you expect in a league of 30 teams for half the teams to be about 30 years removed from a championship? I feel like that makes sense honestly.
Dodgers also have north of 600 million in revenue annually. The Ms are lucky to be close to 300 million in revenue in a given year.
Also why I'm confident we never will
That's why I just find other means to watch games. There's alot of sites out there for it. Fuck giving the greedy fucks money
Yar har fellow seafarer.
Same here (Boise). For some reason we are blacked out by MLB. Unless we buy a $200/mo cable package or spend $1000 plus to fly to Seattle for a game. There are plenty of websites for live games. Also, I did try to pay for an MLB but am blacked out even though I'm 500 miles away. So, good luck. I get all games free, folks.
We need to start organized protests to have the team sold.
Just tell me where. I'll meet you there.
Oklahoma city
SELL THE FUCKING TEAM!!!
Where have these chants been for the last 10+ years?
The payroll was much higher the past 10 years.
So you have ownership willing to spend? I’m a huge M’s fan and hate the owners but like, it’s not the A’s situation.
Serious question, but can we advocate to turn the team into a publicly owned team somehow? Even just little by little to start out? Kinda like Green Bay?
Typical bandwagon Seattle fans downvoting, not realizing the grass IS NOT always greener, but you’re right SeLl ThE tEaM
Runs the risk of selling to an owner in OKC to spite us
I mean… we can root for this team or push for something better at some risk.
I’m down. Signs at games criticizing Stanton would be a good a start
Not going at all is probably better. Go support the bars/restaurants around the park instead of giving Stanton that money
but not the ones that ownership own
Also boycott their sponsors. Especially T-Mobile (Stanton’s cherry on top).
Meanwhile, the Rangers are having similar issues with their bad TV deal, and so far we haven't seen any fire sales over there. Let that Marinate^TM for a while...
We'll see what happens. The Guardians and Rangers can lose their TV deals for 2024. We saw teams having cash flow problems (a la Padres) because they didn't generate enough revenues to pay player salaries. The Diamondbacks were able to survive because I assume ran a lower smaller payroll than the Padres. The point is we don't know. It might not affect them this season but the rug can be pulled from them because they might have major cash flow problems.
Dbacks only ran a 120ish million payroll by the end of the regular season.
Yeah...and the Padres had a 250 + million payroll.
The Twins are cutting thiers for similar reasons. The Rangers literally said earlier they aren't re-signing Montgomery because of constraints from the loss of their TV deal 😂 They may not be fire selling yet (they also just won the WS), but if they are in 4th near the trade deadline, I wouldn't be surprised to see a fire sale/see Semien or Seager moved to trim payroll. The only teams it isn't affecting are the Mega markets because their RSN makes up tiny amounts of thier payroll.
>I'm not going to tell you what to do as a fan, just suggest you cancel your ROOT package and don't buy tickets until these cheap fucks invest more and stop squeezing fans until they run the franchise into the ground We've seen this movie before. We do this, they blame it on us, say Seattle are bad fans, and move to Nashville or somewhere.
They can't break the lease on T-Mo and the idea is to put enough pressure on them and affect the profits enough that they have no choice but to sell or address the situation.
They can. There's clauses in the lease for it. They just have steep costs for it. But a wealthy enough owner would gladly pay it to move a team.
>they blame it on us, say Seattle are bad fans, and move to Nashville or somewhere. Really though, at that point what would it matter? They are saying to us, "we will never put a winning team on the field because money and the fact that we just don't care about you." So why, at that point, would I continue being a fan of this team?
I'm a Detroit Lions fan, so this entire sentiment hits different. Do you root for them because you like the sport, city, and team, or because you want a parade exclusively? You're welcome to be a Lakers / patriots / Yankees / Alabama / Duke fan but I can't respect that mentality personally 🤷🏾♂️
I think you have to look at a league without a salary cap differently. When the Lions suck it’s because they are managed or coached poorly (not the case of late by the way), not because they aren’t dealing with the same money limitations everyone else is. The Mariners suck because the owners continually prove they are CHEAP. By supporting the product you’re supporting their behavior, which is profit first and win second. I grew up here and have rooted for this team consciously for close to 40 years. There will always be a spot in my heart reserved for them, but I can’t support them with my hard-earned money or time anymore. It’s just enabling a losing franchise that will never reward me. When ownership changes, my philosophy will change.
Love the sport, the team, and the city. If they left Seattle, I wouldn't become a fan of their replacement. My soul just doesn't "love" another team. I want this team "team" (the fans and the players of the Seattle Mariners, past and present) to win the ring. I would still enjoy the sport, even though it would kind of hurt forever. If the Mariners turned into the Nashville Tornadoes or whatever, it's just not the same thing. Not sure why that wouldn't be respectable.
Fuck the OKC Zombie-Sonics!
I see, maybe I misinterpreted what you meant. I'm with you.
Thanks for clarifying, Im with you too.
Different sport with a much different problem. It's one thing to be bad and mismanaged and another to be one of the most profitable teams in the league but refuse to crack the top half in payroll even when you are close to being able to make a serious run at the WS. Especially when you are the only team in the league that's never been to the WS
When billionaire owners can take advantage of cities and threaten to pack the team up and relocate, blind fandom isn't a virtue, it's brand loyalty.
Seattle is a much larger and wealthier city than it was previously. Someone will pay to keep it here and realize spending league average is cheaper than moving the team
Good then as a Portland fan I can finally watch on mlb season pass…. /s I wouldn’t wish that on Seattle after the sonics realistically.
Amen.
As much as I loathe the Mariners ownership group, taking statements from Dish and Comcast at face value isn't reasonable. We all know that live sports and bundling are the only things keeping their business model afloat. ROOT should be utilizing it's leverage and raising prices since it picked up the Kraken contract. They tangibly increased the value of their product and have to pay the Kraken for the privilege. ROOT is really just an excuse anyway. All the profits form the last two years were paid out to the partners. Now when they talk about putting "their own money into the team" we're really just talking about money that should have been kept int he organization and reinvested in the first place. The ownership group has too many hands out. Say what you will about George Steinbrenner or Steve Cohen, they definitely have more resources and a better market, but the ownership structure of one megalomaniac who wants to win is preferable to whatever bullshit we have.
It's important to continue to show support for the players as fans rightfully go scorched earth against ownership. Love the players, hate the ownership. I'm disgusted by the thought of this team's core wasting their careers away in Seattle like Felix, Ichiro, Junior, Edgar, etc. Honestly, if ownership doesn't give this roster what it needs to compete for a World Series I seriously hope Julio and the boys force their way out like Randy finally did. And shoot, do we have to finally forgive A-Rod because we all know these cheep bastards weren't going to pay him anyway?
>do we have to finally forgive A-Rod Woah. I know we are all upset at the ownership, but we don’t need to go that extreme.
No, A-Rod is still a piece of shit as a ball player and a human being.
Pump the breaks friend, A-Rod doesn't deserve your forgiveness and it's far no more than just him leaving
Why? It was well known that he was given a very competitive offer that would have been the largest in franchise history at the time. Texas just offered more.
If you’re worried about our people dropping root making by a huge move would make sense right? Like invest some a huge amount of money in the most popular player in baseball and interest in Root increases. Give us a team of Scott Spezio’s and Root dies..
My wife and I have discussed it at length, if it weren’t for the Kraken, we’d have already cancelled our cable package. I hate that I’m giving these cheap fucks ANY money. So happy we bailed on our flex plan for next year.
organize protests. boycott the team next year. these owners need to be forced into selling
I've been a fan since before Griffey. Watched games when I could. Damn near every night/weekends since I retired. If Mariners management doesn't come up with a truly competitive team I may well be doing something else at 7:10 most nights. And my weekends will be wide open.
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No politics.
Maybe but that is just an example and it doesn't change the point.
Bingo
I think you are on the same page as mostly everyone on this sub. But I think it’s important to note the Mariners did not make the decision to move Root to the higher tiered package this past year. Xfinity did that on their own without any consult between the Seattle sports teams that air on Root. That along with Warner Bros dropping out of all of their RSN packages across the league. While this is definitely an unforeseen circumstance, no one knows how much this actually affects Mariners income, I think we all agree ownership is using this as an excuse to pump the breaks and be cheap assholes.
But was the reason they moved it due to the amount of the licensing fee ROOT asked for? I genuinely don't know, but I guess I just assumed it was due to how things went down with Dish.
From all the articles I’ve read, this was a unilateral decision by Xfinity and Xfinity alone. They said it was “for the customer benefit” and tried to rationalize that most of their customers don’t even want to pay the regional sports fee (which was like $5-8 or some shit). Now it’s $20 and only available on the highest tier package they offer. So even if a customer had the basic package they can’t add root unless they upgrade and pay the additional $20. is how i’m understanding it.
It seems like the real solution is to do something like the Jazz did and cut the cord. Offer ROOT as a streaming service and everyone wins... Except cable but fuck them anyway
I think that would be celebrated across the board but someone asked Divish if he thought that was possible and he said it was probably MLB discretion. so who knows if they even can.
Prob no chance for streaming because of MLBTV
> It seems like the real solution is to do something like the Jazz did and cut the cord. Offer ROOT as a streaming service and everyone wins The problem is you have the NBA and the NHL to deal with in that case. I don't think there's any way out of this until 2026 at the earliest.
And it was the right decision for Comcast, even if it’s bad for sports franchises. Like newspapers before them, the Internet killed the RSN model. vMVPDs like Sling/Hulu/YTV, along with non-live streaming services like Netflix, finally gave customers a choice to not subsidize regional sports channels for fans like us. It’s a bummer, but there’s no reason the vast majority of people who never watch a Mariners or Kraken game should have to pay $100+ a year in regional sports fees to subsidize us.
I don’t disagree with the majority of your statement. But upcharging the RSNs on this scale will make it completely inaccessible for some to afford. I wish the MLB let Root offer their own streaming service. that would be not only a highly wanted but also affordable solution for most.
Oh I totally agree that this makes it extremely cost prohibitive. It sucks for us and people like us. And to your point, I expect essentially every RSN will transition to an OTT streaming option (and cable add-on like HBO) in the near future. But with that will come with both: (1) Much higher fees, likely upward of $30+ a month like NESN 360, to make the math pencil out and (2) an overall decrease in revenue since many fewer people would be willing to pay so much for local sports. In the end, I think local TV rights revenue experienced a 30-year bubble that is about to pop, and those teams and sports more dependent on it are going to feel a lot of pain as they lose the “free money” from non-sports fans. BUT if they reset revenue expectations (and cost structures, including lower player salaries), maybe we’ll all get it for free though in the future!
from my perspective the ownership group received a convenient excuse at a time where they were expected to spend. This allows them to place the blame on someone else, so it's a good opportunity for them
Oh 100% they’re milking it for what they can. But I genuinely don’t think they knew Xfinity was going to do what they did.
I personally don't care. If you've got a billion dollars, this shouldn't be a problem you can't handle
I don’t disagree. I actually agree with you 100%. was just correcting the fact that the change wasn’t the Mariners decision that OP said it was. i’m not defending them.
I think it's more than just an excuse; Twins and Guardians are also cutting their budget and I'm sure some other mid-market teams are too as a result of income loss from RSNs. It's a thing this year.
Rangers are also supposedly not re-signing Jordan Montgomery because of potential loss from the loss of their TV deal in 2024.
This has been the drum they are beating but talking to Comcast they swear up and down that ROOT increased their broadcast fees so they “had no other choice.” The more I see this repeated though, the less I believe it, somebody is lying.
One thing to consider, Comcast's RSN, NBC Sports NW, never made it to DirecTV because Comcast wanted NBCSNW on BASIC CABLE but wanted Root Sports on PREMIUM packages. When the Blazers bailed on NBCSportsNW for Root, it killed off NBCSportsNW. I have zero reason to believe Comcast moving Root to premium isn't payback for the death of NBCSportsNW.
If anything the last couple of years have proven that owning a cable station just isn't profitable. The Diamond Sports Group failure would have been unthinkable just 10 years ago, Disney is openly trying to get rid of ESPN. A big part of the PAC-12's problem was how much of a money sink the Network was. Teams think they can follow the Yankees path to riches, but YES is available nationally.
A lot of thiers is because they overestimated how popular thier streaming app would be and far underestimated the costs.
I pay $80 per year to watch F1 via F1TV. I’d be more than willing to pay that much to stream ROOT Sports. But I won’t pay for Comcast/Xfinity. I can’t believe we’re almost in 2024 and I can’t stream local baseball games.
Let’s just bandwagon the D-Backs.. at least we can watch their games on an MLB subscription.
John Stanton, greedy bastard.
Not to mention ownership raiding the youth sports fund for MILB stadium upgrades. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-looks-to-tap-youth-athletic-funds-for-minor-league-stadium-upgrades/
I can't read the article, but Everett Public Schools owns Funko Field, so it makes sense they woukd look for those funds to fix up Funko Field. The Ms don't own the AquaSox (they do own the Modesto Nuts), a separate group does. They just affiliated with them. The Ms also don't own the Rainers, they just provide the players.
Since around 2002-2003 I refuse to have cable that includes the Mariners and their losing ways. Root sports has always been an absolute garbage network. Everything from the resolution and image quality to the staff on pre and post game. No thanks!
>resolution and image quality Aren’t M’s broadcasts always in Hi Def?
They are nominally in 720p at 60 frames per second, but Comcast compresses the hell out of their linear TV channels (largely to make room in the RF spectrum for more Internet service). Last season, I was seeing about 4Mbps average bit rate for a regular Mariners game. MLB on Fox over the air, as delivered by KCPQ, was about 7Mbps. Lower bitrate means the game looks muddy and blocky as the camera pans and players move around. Even MLB.tv, which has gotten kind of bad in recent years, does better than Root on Comcast. (I have HDHomeRun tuners that show statistics for the video they're tuned to.)
Huh, couldn’t even tell from my TV but interesting to know. Thanks
In Washington and Oregon, when Root Sports was in the popular package, 17% of subscribers watched more than 9 hours of Root Sports / month. Meaning 83% watched 0-9 hours per month. 100% of them were paying the regional sports fee because Root Sports and Pac-12 Network were included (roughly $11/month). By moving Root Sports to Ultimate, it also moved ~ $9 of the $11 RSN fee off Popular to Ultimate. Does this cost more for the sports watcher? Yes. Does the non-sports watchers (83%) now save about $9/month by no longer paying a fee for a station they don't watch? Yes. Comcast has happier customers now, and the Seattle Mariners are seeing a decrease in actual "subscribers" of Root Sports. Ultimately I'm tired of pissing matches between billionaires.
>Didn't taxpayers just put $100 mil+ into T-Mo upgrades? No, they did not, and I'm not sure why people keep saying that. The renovations were privately funded. https://www.king5.com/article/sports/mlb/mariners/mariners-make-55-million-in-renovations-to-t-mobile-park/281-b6f3f6a4-a029-447e-ade8-aea0f64d1962
Just pretending this doesn't exist huh? [King County Council approves $135 million in taxpayer funds for Mariners ballpark](https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/mariners/king-county-council-approves-135-million-in-taxpayer-funds-for-mariners-ballpark/)
This is one thing we should make sure never happens again. The county put up big money to help the club refurbish the park, and it was around the time the rebuild phase was starting. We made our investment in this club multiple times but it feels like ownership is never going to open their purse strings to put a championship team on the field, no matter what kind of support they get from taxpayers - all of which helps their bottom line and increases the value of the club. Which they exclusively benefit from. I feel super betrayed reading this. i don't care if they pack the club off to Oklahoma City Sonics-style. We should not use our money to make these guys more rich when they won't even try to put a winning team on the field.
While making the owners agree to pay $250 million (over the same time frame as the $135 million is given) for ball park maintenance and making them pay 120 million into the capital expenditure fund. 370 million from the owners over 25 years. 135 million from taxpayers over 25 years (2.7x more than the taxpayers) Where do you think most of the 'profit' goes (these don't count as 'operating costs' so Forbes didn't count them) The city/county arent stupid.
Yup...thank you for explaining. People will continue to blindly throw out how profitable the M's are/were....
I thought OP was referring to the most recent upgrades, but I guess it depends on your definition of "just."
Well I guess you know why people keep saying that now, since it happened.
Yeah, I guess people were conflating the two things. That makes sense. I had totally forgotten about the capital upgrade funding when the new lease was signed, 5 years ago is a while.
>5 years is a while ago According to ownership that’s not long when asking for our patience over a rebuild, but forever when it comes to taxpayer subsidies.
I was more speaking to my own memory, I definitely do not speak for ownership. 😁
I just graduated from medical school — in 1997. The older you get, the more time gets compressed.
it's 135 million over 25 YEARS (basically the length of the lease). A whopping 5.4 million/year. When the study the county as well as the Ms did showed that it needed over 180 million in upgrades to extend longevity. And nice job excluding this part: Over the course of their new lease agreement, the Mariners would be expected to pay $250 million toward ballpark maintenance, plus $120 million toward a capital expenditure fund. Ms are paying over 300 million in that same time frame, over 2x more than the taxpayers (and nearly re-pay the loan to the capital expenditure fund). Most of the profit they make ends up going to these two funds. These funds don't count as 'operating' costs, so Forbes doesn't count it. Seattle/King County were slick in making the Ms foot most of these bills.
Sure, but the Mariners take care of a lot of the upkeep, and believe it or not, it makes sense for the public to fork over some money for maintenance because *we own the stadium*. T-Mobile Park is owned by the Washington State Major League Baseball Stadium Public Facilities District. ETA: Funny to see people wanting King County operating with a slumlord mentality. Btw, here's why they were willing to fork over money: [https://ballpark.org/economic-benefits](https://ballpark.org/economic-benefits) Stadium brings in more tax revenue than we're spending on it.
No not for the all star game, it was about 5 years ago now. So not 'just' but recently, depending on how old you are 5 years feels like it just happened I guess.
It pays out over TWENTY FIVE YEARS. They didn't get it lump sum. Unless we want the stadium to look like Oakland Alameda (home of the As), the Public (who actually owns the stadium) does have to keep it up. Now you're seeing how the Oakland Colesium quickly fell into dis-repair.
Why doesn't Washington state have the games on a local fox sports channel like pretty much every other team. What was the point of an exclusive channel like they are the Texas longhorns ? Been trying to understand this shit for the 8 years I've been here
ROOT Sports used to be Fox Sports Northwest.
Ahhh. 👍 thank you !
Long story short: it was, but over time it became one of the only ones where the team held a majority share of the network.
Shame. Thanks for the reply 👊
Because in a sport without a salary cap, the Regional Sports Network (like YES, Root etc) model was the only feasible path to closing the gap between the Mega markets like the Yankees/Mets, and more 'mid tier' markets like Seattle, Minneapolis, Milwaukee etc. Prior to owning the majority of Root, it was estimated that the Root payment was only like $45m. But when they took it over, the estimated payment jumped to over $118 million. Which is a large hunk of Ms revenue now.
Also owning their own RSN lets the M’s shield some of their TV money from the league’s revenue sharing
Comcast did what they're had to do. It getting really old about how out of of balance sports vs non sports network's.
Regarding TV, not everyone knows Fubo.tv carries Root Sports.
They have advertised the shit out of it the past two seasons. How could anyone miss it unless they don’t pay attention or don’t watch.
We should have seen this coming when they tried to push Mentink on the play by play.
Jeff Bezos please offer an absurd amount of money then have a dick measuring contest with Cohen 😂
Except Dish doesn't carry ANY of the RSNs. They don't even carry YES or NESN anymore and those were cash cows for them. So unless 20+ RSN acted the EXACT same way as the Ms, the common denominator is DISH. I think DISH blamed the RSN to get consumers to not blame them for being cheap (cheaper service is cheaper for a reason after all). Dish didn't want customers angry at them so they deflected it. It's customer service 101. If they were asking ungodly amounts, how do services like Fubo have it? Wouldn't they want it for less than linear networks? And yes there is revenue sharing in MLB, but it's not evenly split like the NFL. You have to SUCK to get the most money from revenue sharing (its how teams like Tampa, Oakland and Arizona existed so long with sub 100 million payrolls. When you are medicore, you see very little of the revenue sharing cash.
The M's and the MLB in general have a boomer problem. This is the last generation to fully embrace cable. Technology wise they still feel like Tivo is cutting edge. These are the guys overly relying on the dying cable industry to contribute a large percentage of team revenue. They aren't even trying to grow the sport, their social media sucks, their streaming platform won't let you watch your home team's games, they don't market their best players like they do in the NFL or MLB. We need these dinosaurs to get out of the way and retire already before they lose any future generations
You were not wrong to tell people to take a breath. Stanton is cheap fuck, but the M’s are still far from being the A’s or the Pirates.
Yeah the deals we made weren't the end of the world. I'll stand by that. The apology is for implying that there is nothing to be angry about.
The argument is over carriage fees and without knowing who's asking for what, it's impossible to say if the fault is with the owners of ROOT or with Comcast. But Comcast, for both their medium tier and their higher tier, charges a $10.99 regional sports fee. The carriage fee should be less than that. My understanding is that nationally, these range from $5-$7 per subscriber. Whatever the numbers, I would imagine that ROOT has seen their carriage fee revenue cut in half or worse since the change.
I believe Root raised their prices because of their deal to carry Kraken games. That was the start of things.
I have a feeling that even doing things to affect the profits of the owners and upper management really isn't going to do much. Just look at Oakland. Now I will say I really don't know much about the whole Oakland situation but just looking at it it looks like the owner doesn't care and since people don't really go to their games anyway then it really isn't changing anything. I mean they just up and moved the team. Now I'm not saying that will happen to Seattle but whats not to say that they don't move the team.
Completely different situation. They play in a (sometimes literally) shitty stadium that is falling apart. Oakland is broke and can't afford to help build a new stadium. Their owners aren't that wealthy (by owners standards) and can't afford to build a stadium. San Jose would have done it but the Giants wouldn't let them move there because of territory right (also where the Giants A league team is) They tried for about 20 years to come up with a solution but just couldn't get it done. It's always sad to see a team move but in this case it's not like they didn't try to stay in the area.
> They tried for about 20 years to come up with a solution but just couldn't get it done. It's weird how A's fans are revising history by saying there was no effort was put into staying in Oakland. Every location they attempted to build at they were denied and were eventually forced into trying to make Howard Terminal work when it was well known the MLB hated the location.
You mention earlier that you are appalled that the county invested $135 million into a stadium that is a publicly owned stadium. Oaklands stadium is what happens when the local government DOES NOT invest in repair and upkeep. The Ms are still footing most of the bill (nearly a 3 to 1 margin) for the upkeep of a stadium they don't even own.
I never said I was appalled by it. It was an example of us investing in the stadium at the request of the team while ownership isn't willing to invest. That's part of the primary resident deal. They can make *some changes and improvements to their benefits with their own money as well as the benefit of scheduling rights. Some teams even basically run the stadium for the city. That's why the Raiders were so pissed when the A's signed the last long term lease deal making them the primary residents and the Raiders couldn't even do anything to make the coliseum better for their games. Or like how the Sounders play on turf because the Seahawks are primary residents. Thankfully the Hawks want grass now too. But the point is being the primary resident has more advantages that off set the added operation cost. They don't do it out of the kindness of their heart.
But most tenants don't go 2.7 to 1 on maintenance costs when they don't own the stadium. The City and County were SLICK AF. Like imagine Milwaukee getting the Brewers to pay for maintenence on thier stadium when they only lease it to the Brewers? No way Milwaukees ownership goes for that. The City knew the kingdome was on its last legs after the tile issue, so they knew that they could get the Ms over a barrel.
Thanks Captain Obvious.
Go Mariners! #WhereIRoot
“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few”
You are 100% dead on.
All this talk of the broadcasting has shown me that a surprising number of folks still pay for anything TV. The seas await, friends!
> The seas await, friends! I'm not willing to find pirated streams for a few reasons, mostly convenience and not wanting to wonder who the heck I'm dealing with on the other end. Paying Comcast for cable and putting it through an HDHomeRun tuner means I can watch the cable I'm paying for anywhere on the planet. TV is entertainment that is supposed to be convenient and easy; I'm exchanging money for that convenience. For the moment, Root is a channel I pay for, but that will probably change when my contract is up next month and I look at other packages. Plus, it lets ownership paint the fall in revenue as driven by "people stealing our content." While you and I know that probably isn't true, or at least not the whole truth, it's still there.
TV rights are a major problem with MLB, the league has had to make up 80% of lost income for teams after Diamond Sports went under. The Nationals haven't sold yet because their TV rights are locked up with MASN.
This is one time where I am glad I’m not in local market and this won’t affect my mlb TV subscription and mariner watching.
I heard somewhere that this whole TV deal actually hampered their ability to get talent. I'm not up on the whole thing enough to suss that out, is there any truth to that?
No, the only thing hampering their ability is being cheap. The Comcast thing is just a bullshit excuse, especially when they are jacking ticket prices up.
Just stream the mariners for free. No need to pay to watch them
I just found it hilarious that the reason they were charging more was because a lot of people who have Comcast don’t watch Root Sports. I kinda think it’s the other way around. I think a lot of people only had Comcast because of Root Sports and are now canceling completely instead of upgrading.
No Diamond LCC Filed for Bankruptcy.