Dallas announces its new streaming initiative, to help fill the gaps from the Bally Sports split
The Dallas Mavericks announced MavsTV Monday morning, their new streaming service for fans in the Dallas Mavericks local market to watch Mavericks games across a variety of devices. This is the final piece of the new Mavericks broadcast puzzle, which helps fill more of the gaps left by the split from Bally Sports earlier this year.
After last week’s announcement of additional over-the-air markets for Mavericks games on WFAA channel 8 and KFAA channel 29, the Mavericks have attempted to smooth over some of the rough edges from fans that still had questions, mainly those that had a live TV service like YouTube TV but didn’t get channel 29, or those that used to rely on Ballys and live in areas that the Mavericks new over-the-air initiative doesn’t reach. MavsTV is a step towards answering those questions.
In a nut-shell, MavsTV functions like the one-team only League Pass option — for either $14.99 a month or $124.99 a season, Mavericks fans that lived in areas that Bally Sports broadcasted Mavericks games in will be able to watch all games that aren’t national TV exclusives on the NBA app, which is available on practically every device that exists in the market. It’s similar to the Bally Sports+ solution fans had to use the last few seasons, except the price is cheaper and, presumably, the experience will be more stable using the NBA app as the foundation (although it remains to be seen, I’ve definitely heard of fans using League Pass that have complained about its reliability.)
The Mavericks also said that MavsTV will eventually launch it’s own dedicated app later this season, which will include “game coverage, exclusive footage, and on-demand original content.”
At the very least, the Mavericks now have a plan in place that should mean no one is left out from watching a Mavericks game if they want to. Fans in the over-the-air markets can purchase an antenna and watch every game for free, and fans not in those markets but ones that are still blacked out from NBA League Pass can purchase MavsTV. Fans that have YouTube TV or Hulu do not have to drop their service for expensive cable or satellite options, and can just sub to MavsTV instead.
Judging from some of the fan reaction, I’d say there’s still a portion of the fan base frustrated by the complications of it all. A lot of fans using YouTube TV and Hulu for live TV, and much like Bally Sports before this, are frustrated they have to purchase an additional streaming service to watch the Mavericks. That’s especially so after the Dallas Stars rolled out Victory Plus, which is a similar streaming solution but at no cost to the user. Obviously the economies are different for the NHL and NBA, but to DFW sports fans, it’s hard to make that sell. It’s even stranger when WFAA channel 8 is on both YouTube TV and Hulu, and channel 29 is owned by the same company that owns channel 8. This is where I plead the fifth on understanding TV broadcast rights and fees — it’s all way over my pay grade. Local DFW radio station The Ticket had WFAA president Brad Ramsey on for an interview last week, and Ramsey indicated that adding a local channel like channel 29 just isn’t a priority for a giant company like YouTube/Google, who make enough money from the product as is. I can’t imagine the rights to channel 29 are cheap, or otherwise a deal likely has been done by now, as the Mavericks attempt to recoup all the millions lost from the Bally Sports deal ending. Live TV providers like YouTube TV and Hulu have been without Bally Sports for almost four years now — if those companies saw significant subscriber drops from users chasing to follow their local sports teams, a deal probably already would be done. My hunch is that YouTube and Hulu haven’t seen subscriber losses to justify paying to add another channel to their plans.
At the end of the day, all of this just hurts the fans, who have to now scramble amongst various options just to watch their local sports team. I definitely miss the older days, which weren’t that long ago, when this seemed all the more simple — you pay for live TV and you got your local team. At the very least, there are now multiple options, compared to the last two years where it was either Bally Sports or bust. That doesn’t mean Mavericks fans should be happy, but the ability to watch the Mavericks in the local markets has gotten easier, and hopefully there is continued to work to make it even easier in the future.