[Coach]

On a different note, the Royals are now free to negotiate with anyone in regards to TV contract.

https://www.kansascity.com/sports/sp...220250390.html

The Royals’ TV negotiations just hit a major mile marker, so what’s next?

By Sam Mellinger
smellinger@kcstar.com

October 18, 2018 03:50 PM
Updated 3 hours 25 minutes ago

The Royals are free agents for the first time in a decade.

The final deadline for the team and Fox Sports to negotiate a new television contract has passed. Effective immediately, the Royals are free to negotiate with any network.

Their current deal with Fox is widely believed to be one of the worst for a team in major professional sports. It expires after the 2019 season.

“We view it as an exciting time,” said Kevin Uhlich, the Royals’ senior vice president for baseball operations. “We don’t view it negatively at all. It’s part of the process, and we’re up for it.”

Fox will pay the Royals about $25 million in the final year of the contract. Uhlich wouldn’t disclose either side’s final offer but said “it’s still a pretty big gap.”

After the 2016 season, the Reds, playing in one of two Nielsen markets smaller than Kansas City, replaced a deal that had been paying about $30 million with one believed to be worth about $1 billion over 15 years.

The Royals are believed to want a 10- or 15-year contract. Local TV deals are among the biggest and most important sources of revenue for franchises.

Despite a 104-loss season that included trades of stars Mike Moustakas and Kelvin Herrera, the Royals were again the most-watched prime-time television programming in Kansas City, and finished sixth among the 29 U.S.-based teams covered by Nielsen.

Among others, the Royals finished ahead of the Astros, Mariners, Yankees and Pirates in local ratings.

The Royals’ negotiation is complicated for lots of reasons, including that TV networks traditionally pay more for market size than local ratings. The TV industry is fairly chaotic, too, not just with Disney’s purchase of 21st Century Fox — which includes Fox Sports KC — but an uncertain future in the face of cord-cutting and streaming.

“The universe is wide open,” Uhlich said. “That’s what makes it so difficult to figure out what the best route is. But we know we have great content. We know that sports is No. 1. So we feel strongly that wherever we go that’s a plus for us. It’s good content. It gets great ratings.”

The Royals expect Fox to remain interested. The team has generally been happy with the partnership in every way except the most important, which is the payout.

The current deal gives Fox the right to review and match any final offer the Royals receive from a third party, with two exceptions: if the Royals start their own regional sports network, or if the offer is more than the team’s final offer to Fox.

The Royals have and will continue to explore all options but are expected to prioritize wide distribution. That likely means a more traditional partner that would be widely available through cable, supplemented with streaming options that could either be run by the partner or negotiated separately with a company like Amazon.

“What’s important for us is to not only cut a deal that’s good for us financially but that we don’t end up in a situation like the Dodgers are in,” Uhlich said of a deal with Time Warner Cable that leaves a large number of L.A. households unable to watch their games. “They don’t reach a lot of fans. That doesn’t help us. We want to make sure any direction we go we’re maximizing distribution and also maximizing revenue.”