Baseball

Major League Baseball Blackout Policy

I am taking issue with Major League Baseball’s blackout rules. Honestly, this MLB blackout policy is just ridiculous. I have the DIRECTV baseball package, yet night in and night out, I can’t watch the games I want to. It’s not just that I can’t watch the feed that I want to (i.e. better broadcasters), I can’t even watch the game I want too. I live in Las Vegas. There are no professional sports teams in the Nevada. The teams blacked out in this city are the Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Anaheim Angels, San Diego Padres, Arizona Diamondbacks, San Francisco Giants, and the Oakland A’s. That means I get next to zero Padres games because they don’t have a channel on DIRECTV. If the Padres play the Mets, for instance, the Sports New York channel that airs Mets games will be blacked out, even though I have no other channel to watch the game on. Apparently, since the Padres have the rights to this area, I have to not watch the game, rather than watch the out of town feed. The Padres games are broadcast on the Las Vegas Cox Cable, so if I wanted to watch them I have to watch on the local cable. The local cable system offers the Padres, Dodgers and Angels, but the locals are still out of luck with Arizona and the Bay Area teams.

It’s not just Nevada. Iowa, the whole state, has the Cubs, White Sox, Brewers, Twins, Cardinals and Royals all in their blackout map. Parts of North Carolina: four teams; Fresno: four teams; Mobile, Alabama: no Braves, Marlins or Devil Rays; Memphis: Atlanta, Cincinatti, St. Louis are off. The Toronto Blue Jays are blacked out in all of Canada! Are the people in these towns realistically supposed to drive for a day and a half to watch their “local” team?

I grew up in New Jersey and I like to watch the New York Mets. But most importantly, I’m a baseball fan. I like to watch three or four games a day, based on who’s playing against whom. If the game is broadcast on DIRECTV, it should be available to anyone with the baseball package. I can understand if you live in a city that has a team. In that instance, you should have to watch the local broadcast. That’s the whole point of the policy- that when there are two feeds, you must watch the local advertising if you live in that market. But why must you if you are not in that market?

Here’s the gist of it from John Helyar at ESPN.com:

“Baseball’s territorial map was drawn for the rabbit-ears era in the 1970s. Its boundaries were set according to the reach of over-the-air broadcast signals, emanating from teams’ flagship stations and affiliates. Today, games are mainly carried on regional sports networks (RSNs), which mostly are carried on cable systems. It’s a “pay” TV distribution system that doesn’t hew to the old territorial patterns of “free” TV.

“The result is the perversion of a perfectly fine principle. Territories were created to protect the value of a team’s TV rights, guaranteeing that nobody else would broadcast into its market. But when you live in the outer reaches of some clubs’ territories, you might as well be in Outer Mongolia. The farther you live from the home team’s ballpark, the less likely it is that your cable system will carry the RSN televising most of the team’s games.”

DIRECTV charges $199.96 for a season of baseball. Here is there websites explanation for the blackout rules. From directv.com:

“If you live in a ZIP code that is within a Major League Baseball team’s territory, that team’s games will be blacked out from the MLB EXTRA INNINGS® game package, but will generally be available as part of your local regional sports, cable or over–the–air affiliate station. Blackouts protect the local rights holders who arrange separate distribution agreements for their exclusive territories.”

While I’m not completely blaming DIRECTV, they could have pressured MLB a little more than they have. If they wanted to offer their customers the best product, they would have tried to do something about the blackout rules. They play innocent in the whole situation, but they control the checkbook. To professional sports, that’s all that matters.

Major League Baseball this year said it was going to look into the blackout rules and see if it was time for a change. In May, at the MLB owner’s meetings in New York, discussion of the blackout policy and MLB Extra Innings was on the agenda. But it’s unlikely anything will come of it until at least next season, and more likely, the season after. Which is just ridiculous.

The rules that DIRECTV have no say in have to do with weekend games. As part of the contract MLB has with ESPN and FOX, games are blacked out on Saturday in the daytime if it is not the FOX game in your area. FOX paid for exclusive rights to the Saturday afternoon games and airs them regionally. While I don’t agree with this anymore than the other rules, this issue needs to be taken up with FOX and MLB. As for Sundays, ESPN has exclusive rights to Sunday night games. This is why everybody plays day games on Sunday. In the evening, nobody else can air baseball against ESPN’s game.

The Extra Innings package should feature every game that is available on a DIRECTV channel. In addition to that, games on local channels should be part of the package if possible, as it is now with some teams. The only exception to this should be when the team in the local market (meaning you actually live in the city of the team), is on a channel, any feeds from the opposing team, or national outlet should be blacked out. Is that so hard to do? I understand that some teams are going to fight for bigger markets, and that’s fine. Even if you cut it to everybody has one local team, I’ll support it. Just don’t try to justify six teams in one city are the “local” team. Especially when the closest team is 265 miles away. For the record, San Francisco is 571 miles from Las Vegas. Yeah, that’s the local market.

Another issue I have, probably more with DIRECTV than MLB is that all replays of games outside of your local market are blacked out. Are you trying to tell me that these teams and advertisers would rather I didn’t watch a game for a second time? Watching a replay at 11AM the following day, or a day game at night hurts no one. There is no opposing broadcast to cater to. There is no local advertiser to compete with. Why in the world are all MLB replays blacked out?

I guess the only solutions to flood DIRECTV and Major League Baseball with complaints. If someone wants to scrape together some contact information, I’ll gladly post it here. Perhaps together we can compile a list of resources and contacts to fight this as a group. If you have any teams blacked out, please post them so we can get a full list. Before next season, I’ll get a form letter posted here that we can all send to Major League Baseball and DIRECTV. Let’s get this changed before next season.

Read my follow up on the MLB Blackout Policy.

UPDATE: Extra Innings has made some improvements in 2008.

UPDATE AGAIN: Nevermind.

View the actual MLB Blackout map from Wikipedia.  See if you can find anywhere that doesn’t have at least one team blacked out.

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