What Mark Walter’s ownership might mean for watching the Dodgers and Lakers

Once upon a time, sports fans wanted freedom of choice. Why pay tens – or maybe hundreds – of television channels when everything you wanted to do was see your favorite teams playing?

The era of the cable is at sunset. Streaming is all the rage. You no longer need to pay for channels that have news, films, cooking and gardening to watch the team at home.

For sports fans, it has become a dear waste too.

Dodgers need a subscription. Lakers need another. Angels, kings and mowers need another. The galaxy and the LAFC require another. Ducks need another one – although they are free for the moment.

To tell the truth, the Dodgers and Lakers direct the most precious sporting property of the city could be the one that carries the dodgers and the lakers.

For many fans in Los Angeles, this could represent freedom of choice: the unique and unique sports subscription.

This future – a chain of broadcasting and a streaming application for Dodgers and Lakers – would we come true now that Mark Walter, the owner of Dodgers control, is the new controlling owner of the Lakers? Walter has not yet spoken publicly about the Lakers agreement, so we launched the idea with sports commercial initiates.

Lakers are on Spectrum Sportsnet. Dodgers are on Sportsnet la. Who owns these channels?

Charter Communications, the parent company of Spectrum, has Sportsnet. The Dodgers, through an affiliated company, owns Sportsnet la, although Charter operates and pays each year to the rights team, just like with the Lakers.

Can the charter move away from the Lakers agreement due to the change of property?

No.

Could Walter buy charter and put the dodgers and the lakers on the same channel?

In theory, yes. Charter would probably give him the Lakers channel for free.

In reality? It seems unlikely so soon. Walter did not become a billionaire by lowering half a billion dollars each year.

Continue.

When the charter predecessor, Time Warner Cable, launched the channels for the Lakers in 2012 and the Dodgers in 2014, the cable and satellite chains were the way most of the fans watched their teams at home. And, because the cable and satellite packages required subscribers to pay 100 channels even if they only looked at five, these cooking and gardening enthusiasts helped enrich all these teams.

Quick advance until today: Nielsen reported in May – for the first time – more Americans watched television via streaming than via combined broadcasting and cable. This so-called “cord cut” has transformed ownership of most of the sports channels from an asset to a passive, and many operators have either bankrupt or forced the teams to take new figures at their rights costs.

What has it to do with the question of whether I can look at the dodgers and the Lakers on a single channel?

The Dodgers chain and the Lakers chain each lose money. Walter would choose between acquiring a Lakers canal losing money or keeping the two charter offers that pay dodgers and lakers over $ 500 million combined each year. No team in baseball makes as much money from local television as the Dodgers, and no basketball team makes as much money from local television as the Lakers.

The Lakers agreement takes place until 2032. The Dodgers agreement takes place until 2038.

Why are these dates important?

While other teams experience various combinations of cables, satellites, streaming and even free television, Lakers and Dodgers can collect the guaranteed income and let these other teams be guinea pigs to learn what works and what does not work in the media world.

Major League Baseball would like to sell a national streaming package in 2028 – a place to monitor your team wherever you are, without any power failure – and NBA figures to explore this option too. This gives Dodgers and Lakers a track long enough to see what could be best for them, in particular to keep their streaming rights or contribute to a league package – and what they would need to do it.

Could a Dodgers-Lakers spouse canal be a long-term solution?

It could be. The NBA joining the MLB to make emissions in series fully national qualifiers, the calendar would align well: April to September for the Dodgers, from October to April for the Lakers. Behind the scenes, staff could largely replace two.

The time of the sports channel to a single team has come and has largely disappeared. The economy is poor, and the enthusiasm for coverage from 24 to 7 years old, an all-access team of a team has dissipated in reality that most fans just want to watch the match.

And Walter adding teams?

Nothing is impossible. Ted Leonsis, who owns Washington’s Washington Capitals, Washington Washington Wizards and Washington’s mystics from WNBA, says the key to sporting success could be a property bundle: having several teams, owning the sites in which they play and have the platforms on which fans see their games.

Walter’s investments now include dodgers, lakers and sparks. Sportsnet also broadcasts sparks.

In 2012, Walter and its partners sought to buy AEG, owner of the Kings, the Galaxy and the Crypto.comarena. The owner of the AEG, Philip Anschutz, chose not to sell then, but Walter could renew this prosecution and, if successful, would control the two sites and four teams which call the city center of the Home.