Archive for MLB.tv

A little over a year ago, Major League Baseball settled a class-action suit against fans who contended that blackout rules violate antitrust laws. The ramifications for not settling could have been massive, as ending the current blackout rules would prevent regional sports networks (RSNs) from claiming exclusivity over territories to air baseball games. This, in turn, would have prevented them from charging cable providers large amounts of money per subscriber to place them in the basic-cable tier — amounts that cable providers still seem (mostly) willing to pay. Instead of risking that potential financial catastrophe, MLB settled. In the process, they lowered the price of MLB.TV and offered single-team solutions. In a less notable development, the deal also included stipulations regarding in-market streaming of baseball games.

As Nathaniel Grow discussed at the time of the settlement, the lawsuit provided incentives for in-market streaming.

Finally, although not mentioned in the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ statement, Eric Fisher of the Sports Business Journal is reporting that the settlement could also pave the way towards allowing subscribers of RSNs owned by Comcast and DirecTV to stream in-market games via MLB.TV. In particular, the settlement agreement will reportedly specify that MLB cannot raise the price of its MLB.TV service until both Comcast and DirecTV reach an in-market streaming deal with MLB for their RSN subscribers.

For a few reasons, this provision wasn’t a big deal at the time at the time of the settlement. For one, preserving blackouts was probably the most important objective the settlement accomplished for MLB. Lowering the price of MLB.TV by 15% and securing lower fees for viewing just a single club’s games was also a bigger priority. Also, MLB had already agreed at the time to in-market streaming for half of the league’s RSNs — namely, those operated by FOX. For all of last season, half the league plus the Toronto Blue Jays had access to in-market streaming. The final reason the provision wasn’t that big of a deal at the time was due to when it would actually matter — i.e. one year later. Of course, that happens to be now.

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For some time now, Major League Baseball teams have depended on major revenues from local regional sports networks (RSNs), entities which themselves have depended on cable providers paying high per-subscriber fees to put those networks on the standard-cable tier. This relationship has long prevented fans from watching their local team without paying for a bulky and often expensive cable subscription. MLB.TV blacks out local games to accommodate the relationship and the revenue that comes with it. While it is not full-scale a la carte, Sling TV’s recent announcement that they will carry FOX Sports RSNs on their new offering for $20 per month is a major win for consumers and a way for MLB to keep their product relevant to those who do not subscribe to traditional cable — frequently a younger demographic that MLB desires.

MLB.TV is a very good product that streams out-of-market games. The announcement last fall that in-market streaming would be available to cable subscribers represented a small step for fans who increasingly consume the game digitally. What was missing, however — and has been missing for years — is a digital option to watch local games without also having to subscribe to a local cable provider. We’re certainly not all the way there, but the newest offering from Sling TV is a big step in the right direction, and a very good compromise for those who do not want to pay for traditional cable.

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If you were glancing at baseball news around the internet recently, you might have come across some announcements from MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. A Forbes‘ article features a headline, for example, that reads “Manfred Announces 3-Year Deal With FOX To Have MLB Games Streamed In-Market“. At MLB’s own website one finds “Streaming deal a huge leap forward for MLB, fans“. Viewing the headlines alone, we might conclude, or at least be hopeful, that this is a really big deal — that MLB is finally getting rid of its blackout policy on MLB.tv, allowing fans to watch their local team without subscribing to an expensive cable television package. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s happening. In-market streaming is a small step towards making baseball more accessible to fans, but does not deal with the principal blackout problems that prevent getting MLB games any way you want them.

In-market streaming, in the iteration announced yesterday, is helpful to fans provided they already pay for a cable service broadcasting their team’s local games. As the Forbes article indicates, the deal is with FOX-owned cable affiliates. Half of the league is broadcast on a cable network owned by FOX, with the other half spread out between other owners like Comcast, Time Warner and DirecTV. While the other networks could reach a deal with MLB, Manfred’s announcement relates exclusively to the FOX-owned properties. In the chart below, the column on the left features the teams whose broadcasts are affected as a result of this agreement, while the column on the right shows teams whose rights are not managed by FOX and are therefore not part of this announcement.

15 Teams With In-Market Streaming for 2016

With In-Market Streaming	Without In-Market Streaming
Atlanta Braves	New York Mets
Cincinnati Reds	Philadelphia Phillies
Cleveland Indians	Chicago Cubs
Texas Rangers	Chicago White Sox
Detroit Tigers	Pittsburgh Pirates
Kansas City Royals	Houston Astros
Los Angeles Angels	Los Angeles Dodgers
Miami Marlins	Seattle Mariners
Milwaukee Brewers	San Francisco Giants
Minnesota Twins	Oaland Athletics
New York Yankees	Washington Nationals
Arizona Diamondbacks	Baltimore Orioles
San Diego Padres	Colorado Rockies
St. Louis Cardinals	Boston Red Sox
Tampa Bay Rays	Toronto Blue Jays

SOURCE: MLB.com

Depending on the cable provider, one might be able to stream games through portable devices if also signed into a home wifi that has also been purchased from the same provider, for example. For the fifteen teams part of this agreement, cable subscribers should have significantly more viewing options. Prior to this agreement, a fan, even if he or she were a cable subscriber and even if he or she paid for MLB.tv, would still be unable to watch games on a cell phone or tablet while located in the home market — nor could could one watch games at the doctor’s office, friend’s home, or while commuting on the train or bus. MLB.tv blacked out the games on own its platform, nor was the local cable provider was providing its own options.

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Saturday….

For most, it’s the best of all days. You don’t have to go back to work for about 48 hours, time to take in some games. You love baseball. You either moved away from where your favorite team resides, you live in a market that doesn’t have a club, or you’re a fanatic and want to watch as many games as you can.

You went out and bought an out-of-market package to “catch all the action”. You either doled the bucks out for MLB Extra Innings for television, or MLB.TV for computer, and if you own an iPhone or iPod Touch, you purchased MLB.com’s At Bat 2010… maybe you’re whacked and have more than one, or possibly all these packages.

And it’s Saturday afternoon, and you decide that you want to watch some other game than what is being broadcast on FOX.  To your surprise, it’s blacked out.

Sunday evening, you decide to try again….  Blacked out due to ESPN.

And, depending on your location, you can be blacked out of 1, 2… up to 6 clubs in some locations during the week.

Is it any wonder that the #1 customer service call to MLB centers on its blackout policy? You think of kicking the TV, but you really want to kick yourself for making the purchase before reading the fine print, or someone with the league.

The problem is nothing new. Here we are with the 2010 season nearly complete, and there is no end in sight for MLB’s convoluted, arcane, and, many would say, unwarranted blackout policy. “I see no reason why there ought to be so many clubs able to blackout in those territories,” said MLB President and COO, Bob DuPuy in 2008. “That’s my intention. That’s my goal. I didn’t get any pushback. The whole thing is about making the game more popular and available.”

2008. And that was after several years of fans, customers, and the media asking, “When are you going to address this issue?”

In 2009, there seemed to be a back door into fans being able to see games in-market, with no blackouts. The problem was (and is) that it costs. On June 24, MLB, YES Network, and CableVision announced that in conjunction with MLB.com, for a one-time fee of $49.95 for the remainder of the 2009 season or $19.95 for any 30-day period thereafter, you could get Yankees games in-market. Just 5 days later, a similar deal was launched by Cox Communications and the San Diego Padres. Both DuPuy, and MLB Advanced Media CEO Bob Bowman said at the time in a conference call that this model for in-market streaming would be coming for more and more clubs in the coming months. Having followed the blackout issue in MLB for years, I posed the question to DuPuy, “Is this how MLB plans to deal with the blackout policy?” DuPuy replied that the answer was no, and that the league was still working to address the blackout policy for MLB Extra Innings and MLB.TV. To date, the deals with the Yankees and the Padres remain the only in-market streaming packages. According to reports, low subscription rates have plagued both. Whether that is the reason that the league hasn’t branched out, at this point in the season, is unknown.

They say that everyone has a story. If you look at the TV television territory map, or see inside MLB Extra Innings, MLB.TV and television blackouts in detail, a large percentage of readers are caught in MLB’s fine print on broadcasts with the out-of-market package at the local and regional level, and everyone that has either MLB Extra Innings or MLB.TV gets burned via national blackouts on Saturday, and part of Sunday due to exclusivity agreements with FOX and ESPN.

It’s moved beyond the ridiculous. At least in 2008 there was someone saying that they were trying. The excuse now is likely that the economy. The owners, afraid to relinquish even a cent of revenue, have gone into a bunker mentality. Excuses, excuses… There’s none left. When, oh when, will the league address the blackout policy? Will it take Congress stepping in? Will it take fans turning their back on the packages? The latter seems unlikely. I know I’m hooked. The league has me the wiffles.

Maybe that’s the biggest and most galling part of the blackout policy. The most dedicated fans are the ones getting burned, but many of us are such a mess — addicted — that we take the kicks, and then afterwords,  in the throes of our withdrawal, hate ourselves for putting ourselves through the pain.

Remember when Saturday was the best day of the week?

The first thing I did on my iPad was check out how the FanGraphs app looked on it. It works, but truth be told you’re better off using the website on an iPad, which will work in its entirety. I much prefer the FanGraphs app on the iPhone to the website, but it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to use it on a bigger screen. Now if you could use the FanGraphs app as an iPad widget and leave it in the corner all the time or something, that would be cool.

The second thing I did was download the MLB At Bat 2010 for iPad.

MLB.tv through MLB At Bat 2010 works great on the iPad. While I was doing the live chat yesterday, I had the iPad propped up with whichever game I wanted to watch that was not blacked out. It’s like having a handheld television, specifically designed to watch baseball games.

And of course you have all sorts of statistical overlays available to you while you watch the game. Want to know which players are in the field, or want to see a boxscore while watching the game? No problem, those are all available right at your fingertips.

There’s also a high resolution MLB Gameday view, where you can see each at-bat, pitch by pitch along with lineup, boxscore, and video highlights. You can pull up so many extra “stat boxes” that it will more or less fill up the entire screen. It all looks really great and because you can’t access the web based MLB Gameday on your iPad, this is really the only official MLB live scoring option available to you.

The downside is that it costs $15 dollars, again. And I say again because I already have MLB At Bat 2010 for my iPhone, which cost $15 dollars too. I also noticed a few opening day bugs, which weren’t show stoppers or anything, but caused the application to crash on me a couple of times. I’m sure these will get ironed out pretty quickly.

While it’s one of the more expensive apps you’ll purchase, it does provide the most robust and prettiest live scoring experience on your iPad, mainly because of the lack of Flash software that will prevent many popular web based solutions (including MLB’s very own) from working. And if you have an MLB.tv subscription and an iPad, getting MLB At Bat 2010 for the iPad is really a no brainer.