How Much Are You Willing To Pay For Bally Sports?

When it comes to watching Minnesota sports teams on TV, Bally Sports North is pretty much the only game in town as they hold the rights to the Twins, Wild, Timberwolves, Lynx and Minnesota FC broadcasts.

There has been a good deal of consternation among Minnesota sports fans over the last couple of years due to the limited availability of the channel on streaming services like Hulu and YouTube TV. While Bally Sports was once a part of those services, carriage fee disputes led to the company pulling out of all the streaming services with the exception of DirecTV Stream.

Now Bally Sports is offering fans a standalone option to watch their favorite teams with a native app. The cost? $19.99/month.

For me this is perfect and reasonable. I literally don't watch any other TV outside of local sports, so I'd be trading in an expensive cable or satellite subscription (around $100/month) for this service priced at under $20.

However, there are many sports fans who feel like it is too big of an ask. Many of the people taking this stance are factoring in the $20 ON TOP OF whatever streaming or cable service they already have.  I can definitely understand that viewpoint as well.

It's wild how we went from demanding a la carte cable pricing ten years ago to rebelling against the notion that these a la carte items would actually cost real money. Watching a full month of games for $20 is significantly cheaper than the cost of a single ticket to see one of the teams in person.