Yes. I can imagine MLB wanting to stay on the good side of Amazon to capture a lot of revenue streams. I can easily see a product on Amazon's website where you can buy streaming rights to your local team much like any product, and have local defined by an IP address, then maybe a second product for national streaming and cable rights for out of market like MLB.TV. The crimp might be on NESN, YES, MASN, and SNY for out of market broadcast.
Working backwards, how many teams have strong RSN partners or ownership interest in a strong RSN?
Wilpon still owns SNY and wants out, so I wouldn't call them very strong. The fangraphs article shows who has ownership rights...
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/lets-update-the-estimated-local-tv-revenue-for-mlb-teams/A lot of those are RSNs in trouble though. Bally's makes up about half of them. The teams on Root/NBC/AT&T have basically been given their RSNs back.
I'm curious about how the Dodgers partnership works. They own half that RSN, but it is clearly losing a tonne of money a year to pay the Dodgers? Do the Dodger owners incur any of those losses?
YES and NESN are probably the ones with the most to lose. They are structured to pay the teams rights that are subject to 48% revenue sharing, but the team gets to keep the profits of the RSN to themselves. They are subject to the same decline in subscribers as everyone else, so that margin has to be shrinking.
I have to think there is a lot of talk amongst owners about de-regionalizing TV broadcasts. I don't know that Amazon wants to get involved in a complicated mess of regional games geolocked to certain areas. Can the few owners who'd be against that be out-voted? MLB needs a plan for the future, and expensive geo-locked direct to customer subscriptions would be a disaster.
MLB has been more vocal in accepting they have a problem with how games are viewed locally and are looking for solutions. The ideal position for MLB would be to be able to get all in-market/out of market games packaged up and out for bid to Amazon, Apple, ESPN, etc. Amazon wouldn't really get any leverage towards the MLB by buying into Bally's and not getting streaming rights. It is possibly they could let the MLB rights die in bankruptcy court as planned, and just buy into Bally's for the NHL/NBA rights. There is also the big problem of the Ballys/Diamond subsidary owing Sinclair ridiculous management fees.
Amazon could be looking at buying certain assets or rights through the bankruptcy court and with league's blessings too.