National League East division championship flags being hoisted high above Ashburn Alley in early April has almost become a yearly tradition in South Philadelphia. It's a good time to be a Phillies fan and it's most certainly a good time to be the Phillies organization. Season tickets sell like crazy, red baseball hats are the style of the day, and kids growing up all across the Delaware Valley want to wear Hunter Pence or Shane Victorino jerseys. The cash is flowing.
But the big cash hasn't even arrived just yet. The Phillies looming television deal is going to make it rain down on 1 Citizens Bank Park Way.
Matt Gelb, the Inquirer's Phillies scribe, wrote an article today about the Phillies current TV deal with Comcast ending in 2015 and illustrated how the current trends in cable deals have shot up to astronomical levels, meaning David Montgomery and his club are going to be looking at gigantic numbers when a new deal comes their way. But just how big?
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Gelb does a real nice job outlining the recent deals made by the Rangers, Angels, and even the Houston Astros for beaucoup bucks. But the deal that could be most telling for the Phillies is the one the L.A. Dodgers are going to sign -- a deal Scott Boras says could be worth as much as $4 or $5 billion.
And then Boras predicted the Phillies could land a deal even larger than that of the Dodgers.
For nine straight seasons, the Phillies' local ratings have risen. Over that period, the growth is 176 percent, according to Sports Business Daily. In San Diego, where the Padres are about to profit, the local ratings decreased 41 percent from 2010 to 2011.
So, yes, we are talking about a possible $5 billion dollar infusion beginning in 2016. And by then, who knows what sort of premium price is being placed on live sports on TV?
You see, advertisers love live sports because people want to watch them live as they happen. So they'll sit through commercials instead of DVR'ing the game and fast forwarding through them all to get to the good parts.
The whole article is worth a read, and in a separate post Gelb also answers some of the questions that you might have, such as why wouldn't the Phillies just start their own TV network like the Yankees did? It's not as easy as you may think.
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The bottom line: it's positive. As in lots and lots of dollars are going to be heading the Phillies way in the not-to-distant future.
That means you should see a quality product on the field for years to come. They'll certainly be able to afford it.