Explaining FanDuel Sports Network’s revamped app and how in-market streaming affects Braves fans

“Now, you don’t need a cable subscription and you can pay a certain amount a month, and it’s the same experience as you would get if you were authenticating (a cable subscription),” Michael Schneider, FanDuel Sports Network’s chief operating officer and general manager of direct-to-consumer, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a phone interview.

Before, Braves fans in Georgia, Tennessee and other parts of the team’s territory needed to purchase a cable package to watch games. The Braves owned their streaming rights, which is why in-market fans couldn’t forego cable in favor of streaming. Now, FanDuel Sports Network — which recently emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy — has the Braves’ streaming rights as part of the emergence plan.

Thus, you don’t need Charter Spectrum, Comcast Xfinity (ultimate tier), Cox, DIRECTV, DIRECTV STREAM, Fubo, Mediacom or U-Verse TV. Don’t have cable? That’s OK.

Now, FanDuel Sports Network is meeting consumers where they are — whether they want cable or not.

“My general take is that especially with how mobile fans are these days, you just need to have the option, right?” Schneider said. “There’s going to be plenty of Braves fans who I’m sure will traditionally watch the way they always have, and that’s great — we’re going to continue to make the best production that’s out there and make the game as best for Braves fans as possible. But look, there’s new cohorts and new audiences out there that just want to watch differently, and that option didn’t really exist — especially when we went off Hulu a few years ago. And it just became a little harder. And so I think, with the direct-to-consumer option, it’s just one more option. If you’re somebody who doesn’t subscribe to cable, if you’re somebody who has never subscribed to cable, if you’re a ‘cord-never’ who’s a much younger individual, it just provides you with another option to do it.

“And so I think that it’s really important to the fans. Now having run this business for really two years, I think the good news is that it really isn’t this shifting of people from cable who are coming to sign up for the direct-to-consumer service. It’s largely a whole new audience of people. That’s what I believe the option is for, to capture that demand that’s out there.”

These days, many people have “cut the cord” — ditched cable. And younger people, as Schneider mentioned, might be “cord-nevers” — people who have never had cable. They might purchase Hulu Live or YouTube TV.

If you were a Braves fan in the team’s territory and didn’t have cable, you couldn’t watch the games.

Now you can, with the FanDuel Sports Network app. The in-market streaming option changes the game for many consumers.

Below is an attempt to answer some of the questions you might have about this. We’ll start simple and go deeper.

What the heck is FanDuel Sports Network?

FanDuel Sports Network South and Southeast equals Bally Sports South and Southeast. Same thing.

The name change can be confusing, but they’re the same company. They’ll still produce and televise Braves and Hawks games.

How is the FanDuel Sports Network app different from what we used to have?

The app should be improved from its Bally Sports-Plus iteration.

“What was important to us — and obviously it was a very up-and-down period given the bankruptcy — we wanted to build a product that worked,” Schneider said. “The first year or so going at it, honestly, I’m sure you could read some blogs and read Reddit as well — it wasn’t really up to our quality. About a year and a half ago, we made the decision to bring a lot of our tech (programming) in house. And what that allowed us to do was, one, control our own destiny when it comes to video quality and stream quality. But two, we’re broadcasting and streaming 4,000 games a year. When we talk to an Amazon or others, we stream more live games than any other provider out there, and so it was really important for us, if we were going to make it through the bankruptcy, to have a sports car — something that was going to move quick, something that was going to work. And building that infrastructure, I think, was critical.”

What are the prices of the app?

FanDuel Sports Network is offering multiple subscription options for its app. One might suit you better than another.

Consumers can purchase the monthly Plan for $19.99 per month. The annual pass is a 12-month subscription that costs $189.99.

The Season Pass is for Braves season. It costs $122.99 right now, but will be $105.99 beginning March 20. It’ll get Braves fans through the 2025 regular season. (Postseason games are national broadcasts.)

FanDuel Sports Network did a lot of research and price testing in each region to decide on the price points. The company sought to understand the optimal price point for the app.

“On a per-game basis, it’s a pretty good value,” Schneider said. “Now, to be clear, there are obviously subscribers or prospects that don’t look at it that way.”

Let’s say you subscribe now and watch even 140 Braves games — including spring training. That’s about 88 cents per game, just for the Braves.

Can I subscribe to the FanDuel Sports Network app if I’m out of market and still get Braves games?

No.

If you are a Braves fan in, say, Kansas City, you’d be getting Royals games if you subscribed to the app. So to watch the Braves, you must buy an MLB.TV subscription. MLB.TV allows you to watch games as an out-of-market fan.

Important note here: Fans in the Braves’ television territory cannot watch Braves games on MLB.TV because of blackout restrictions. FanDuel Sports Network owns exclusive rights to broadcast games in that territory.

What if I don’t want to purchase the app? Can I still watch on cable?

Yes.

If you are, say, a satisfied Comcast customer, you can keep your cable package and nothing will change for you. And if you have a cable package, you can still use your information to sign into the app and watch through there, if you’d prefer.

The same goes for DIRECTV, DIRECTV Stream and Fubo, which are of the satellite and streaming category. No changes there. If you’re a happy customer with any of them, you can keep them.

What features should I expect from the FanDuel Sports Network app?

Schneider formerly worked at Hulu and led the launch of Hulu Live, the company’s live television streaming platform.

FanDuel Sports Network app users can expect a revamped experience.

“I’m kind of a purist, and so for me, the most important things — and the most important thing to my product and engineering teams for one — do all the boring stuff first,” Schneider said. “So what I mean by boring stuff is just get the thing to work. Because in a direct-to-consumer environment, people leave if the thing doesn’t work, especially in live sports. And so the major work over the last year and a half was just the stuff that consumers will never see. Now, over the last few months, the team has done a terrific job at, one, building a really simple experience. If you’re a fan of sports, it’s very simple. The game’s there, the game plays terrific. There are going to be features — some will be available around opening day and we’ll be releasing them throughout the season — where, hey, if you want some more data about a particular player or the team, you got that.”

The direct-to-consumer team has partnered with FanDuel about ways they could potentially use data together to add to fans’ experience.

The direct-to-consumer team is looking at ways fans engage with teams and how they can support that. Some fans listen to podcasts. Others bet. Many buy tickets and go to games.

“How can we start to provide that fan around the live game with things that they’re already doing with the team?” Schneider said. “And I think that that’s a conversation that we’ve really gotten into deep with some of our teams as well. But over the next three to five years, I think there’s a true opportunity in these markets to do that.”

Speaking of that, how much will sports gambling be featured?

FanDuel is an online sports betting company. To what degree might sports betting be included in the app experience eventually?

“I mean, look, we’ve been in some exciting discussions with them about what from FanDuel we can potentially add to the viewer experience,” Schneider said. “But look, it’ll always be opt-in. And for those that are interested in such a feature, we want to make that available to them. But for those that don’t, we don’t want to be overbearing and it’s not going to play a huge hole in the direct-to-consumer app. It’s certainly a divisive issue amongst fans, and we just want to figure out ways for, hey, those that like it, it’s there, for those that don’t, they’re not gonna be hit over the head with it.”

Sports betting isn’t yet legal in Georgia, but is legal in Tennessee, for example. There might be odds listed on a bottom ticker on a broadcast, but play-by-play broadcaster Brandon Gaudin and analyst C.J. Nitkowski likely won’t be discussing sports betting. And it doesn’t sound like fans will be able to bet through the FanDuel Sports Network app out of the gate — FanDuel has its own app for that.

Which games will be on which platforms?

If a game is on FanDuel Sports Network, it will be on cable television and streamed on the app.

This season, Gray Media is airing some of the Braves’ games. In spring training, those games will only be on Gray Media. But the regular-season Gray games will be simulcast on FanDuel Sports Network (and its app).

The ESPN “Sunday Night Baseball” broadcasts won’t be on FanDuel Sports Network. Those are exclusive nationally televised games, as are the games on Fox, AppleTV and Roku.

What’s the deal with Amazon Prime?

If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can download FanDuel Sports Network through Prime Video. It’s considered an add-on, and will cost $19.99 per month.

It gives consumers another place to find FanDuel Sports Network’s live events.

I’m confused. Can you recap this entire story?

Anything for you, dear reader.

To recap: