[gusty]

The canary in the coal mine for what you are stating is in Los Angeles. SportsNetLA payed way too much for the rights to the Dodger games that it cannot get on cable or satellite carriers as a premium channel. The carriers will only take it if it is on a separate sports tier. The carrier wants to charge extra to customers who want the channel to justify its cost to them. Thus the Dodgers are not on TV in LA on 75% of the market. In the future, some of these MLB TV deals are going to decrease as the rights holders lose big money with these current deals.

[11th Commandment]

Yup, these value are going to decline when these rich TV contracts expire. I noticed some of the most valuable teams have the lowest profit%. They have to spend $$ on players to justify the big TV contracts and bring in fans. What happens to these teams that only attract because of big name players when there is no TV money?

IMHO the most valuable teams are the ones with fans outside markets- St. Louis, Chicago Cubs, Braves, Dodgers. Add the Yanks but they already monetize the out of market fan base.

[Resolute Conservative]

Factor in Spanish only channels...

[RayChuang88]

Correct. This wasn't like the YES Network when it first started in the early 2000's, which everyone wanted to watch but one James Dolan refused to allow on Cablevision until threats of lawsuits finally ended that standoff. The problem with the Dodgers deal was that they got too greedy and as a result, most cable and satellite viewers in the Los Angeles area couldn't see them, which may end up costing the Dodger potentially hundreds of millions in subscriber and advertising revenue.

Indeed, the reason why the NFL thrives right now is that the gigantic money the NFL earns from NBC, CBS, Fox, and ESPN rights fees is equally split among all the NFL teams.