'A quick, direct route of high quality': Pirates president touts TV partnership with Penguins

Long before they finalized a deal with the Pittsburgh Penguins to form joint ownership of SportsNet Pittsburgh, Pirates chairman Bob Nutting and president Travis Williams relied on relationships with John Henry and Tom Werner of Fenway Sports Group to plant seeds for a partnership.

The Pirates opted for certainty and continuity over the unknown, joining forces with the Penguins on SportsNet Pittsburgh instead of a proposed TV deal offered by MLB to replace the regional sports network model. FSG, which also owns the NHL’s Boston Bruins and MLB’s Red Sox, completed its purchase of AT&T SportsNet in late August and manages it through the New England Sports Network.

The partnership, which begins Jan. 1, will continue to make Pirates games available by the same cable, satellite and streaming services — using the same broadcast teams — that carried their games in previous seasons. Williams said MLB saw no conflict of interest with the crossover between the Pirates and Red Sox on NESN.

“I think the MLB model is a very viable option. It was perfectly acceptable. It would have been able to give us opportunity to present our game to our fans,” Williams told TribLive. “The thing that really stood out to us was, No. 1, the relationship we had with the Penguins, with FSG and their ownership certainly allowed us to have a conversation around a complex set of topics in jointly owning a network and launching it and what that looks like in this region.

“We were able to, through that relationship, get comfortable with the direction NESN and the Penguins were going with that network. The opportunity for us to step in quickly and make sure that our fans who enjoy our games on cable today and are going to continue to be able to do that. So the distribution is the same throughout the region. We were really pleased with NESN’s launch of SportsNet Pittsburgh and the production quality and how they approached presenting the Penguins games. All of that certainly stood out to us. I wouldn’t say the league’s product or proposal was bad. There was a quick, direct route of high quality, one that our fans would expect from us.”

The continuity was important, considering they had a 71.8% ratings increase (2.45 to 4.21) last season. Only the World Series champion Texas Rangers (98.6%, from 0.71 to 1.41 on Bally Sports Southwest) made a bigger ratings jump. The Pirates ranked sixth in MLB in television ratings in 2023, behind the Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals, Milwaukee Brewers, Cincinnati Reds and Baltimore Orioles.

This came after Warner Bros. Discovery, which owned AT&T SportsNet, informed the Pirates in February that it intended to exit the regional sports business and transfer the networks to team ownership.

Baseball teams were anticipating an end of the RSN model but were stunned by its sudden and swift collapse. Diamond Sports Group, a division of Sinclair Broadcast Group that operates Bally Sports regional sports networks, also threatened possible bankruptcy.

“I think a lot of clubs certainly saw this coming on the horizon, maybe not as quickly as it did,” said Williams, who spent a decade as chief operating officer for the Penguins and president of business operations for the New York Islanders. “Our hope was that we could continue to be on AT&T SportsNet Pittsburgh as long as our existing deal. We didn’t know how much longer after that it would last, but we were certainly hoping we would get through the end of our current deal.

“So we were surprised last year when Warner Bros. approached us about terminating it. But, at the same time, we already were having conversations with the Penguins and others about what that looked like. The league as a whole was going through that same thing with Diamond Sports and Bally’s network. All of us were prepared but also somewhat surprised by how quickly all of this came to a head in the industry.”

Williams anticipates the new television deal to make an impact on the industry, but he said it wouldn’t make an impact on the club’s major-league payroll next season. Pirates general manager Ben Cherington has said the intention is to increase the 2023 Opening Day payroll of $73,277,500.

“The bottom line is, our deal, at the end of the day we were looking for an opportunity to make sure our fans continued to watch our games,” Williams said. “Obviously, economics impact lots of things within your business. I wouldn’t say it would have a direct impact on payroll, though. I don’t look at specific deals as having impacts on payroll. It can certainly impact your business and how you make decisions on where you invest your business and whether or not you need to make hard decisions.”

“I wouldn’t say whether this deal got done or not was going to have an impact on payroll. We have a clear vision of what we want to accomplish. We’ve had that since I came on board and Ben came on board (in November 2019). We’re completely aligned with Bob, and we continue to execute that vision and that plan. I wouldn’t say this was going to have any impact directly on that plan or on our payroll.”

Following a season that marked the return of five-time All-Star and 2013 NL MVP Andrew McCutchen to the Pirates as they had the best record in the National League over the first month, spent 33 days in first place in the NL Central and finished with 76 wins for a 14-game improvement after back-to-back 100-loss campaigns, Williams wants to capitalize on the excitement surrounding the youngest club in MLB with the return of PiratesFest on Jan. 6 at D.L. Lawrence Convention Center.

“I think internally everybody is excited with what the 2024 season has ahead of us. I think our fans should be excited as well,” Williams said. “I think people last year started to see the vision that we had in terms of executing the plan that we started back in 2019. You’re starting to see a lot of that young core come up here and impact the major leagues. You saw ‘Cutch’ come back — a lot of people were excited about him coming back — and being part of the Pirates, back in the black and gold where he belongs. You saw the hot start and the reaction a lot of the fans had around the enhancements around the ballpark the last couple years and the strong finish that we had.

“The young lineup that was almost a year to two years younger than the next youngest lineup in Major League Baseball. In addition to that, there’s still more coming. There’s still a lot of young talent in the minor leagues, being one of the top rated minor leagues. A lot of that energy, excitement, passion and what they saw on the field is starting to translate into that same energy, excitement and passion that the fans have.”

That starts with connecting with fans through the television deal, which will allow the Pirates to return the broadcast teams of Greg Brown and Joe Block on play by play and former Pirates Matt Capps, Bob Walk, Neil Walker, John Wehner and Kevin Young as color analysts.

The pregame and postgame studio shows are expected to increase from 30 minutes to a full hour, and the Pirates are considering the idea of adding former shortstop Jordy Mercer and pitcher Steven Brault as studio analysts alongside Michael McKenry.

While the partnership with the Penguins is expected to be a multi-year contract, the Pirates could leave the door open for a future television deal with MLB once it sees how it replaces the RSN market.

“Obviously, as an industry I think it will make an impact,” Williams said. “We’re all managing the impact and making sure we navigate to get to the point to where we understand what the future looks like, which will be a combination of linear cable and direct-to-consumer streaming products. We’re all trying to figure that out across the entire industry. Leagues are trying to figure it out. Clubs are trying to figure it out. We’re all navigating in the short term to make sure that our fans can continue to enjoy the games and, in the long term, to make sure that we get to a point where our fans still can continue to enjoy the games and be an economic model that allows us to continue to grow and thrive.”