At almost every bar in Vegas, Sundays in the fall and winter are chock full of jersey wearing football fans drinking beer in front of an array of televisions broadcasting every NFL match up in sparkling high-definition. For a reasonable fee, DirecTV will beam all these games into your living room, and in Vegas, with no local team, sans blackouts. Baseball junkies here are not so lucky. Major League Baseball's ridiculous blackout policies prevent such luxury. Six teams claim Nevada as a local market - the Dodgers, Angels, D-Backs, Giants, A's, and Padres. We get about a hundred Angels and Dodgers games from FSN and Prime Ticket, and the Padres local feed if you have Cox. But for a true seamhead, this isn't nearly enough. However, springing for the 160 dollar Extra Innings package is a waste. Sure, the Yankees and Red Sox and Indians are on every night, but the west coast games are virtually non-existent.
The problem has it's roots in the era of broadcast, rabbit-ear antennae television rules. Teams gerrymandered their blackout zones according to the power of their local signals, and when you only have a dozen channels to choose from anyway, it wasn't such a big deal. Of course today, with 500 channel digital cable subscriptions, this is irrelevant. Still, teams hold on to their rights and infuriate their biggest and most loyal fans.
Exclusivity deals are another issue. ESPN holds the rights to all Sunday night games - which isn't really an issue because most games are played on Sunday afternoon. Saturdays are another matter entirely. FOX's deal guarantees that no games can be televised by anyone else before 7pm EST. They broadcast regional games, but blackout all other FOX games on Extra Innings regardless of broadcast territories. On any given Saturday, they will broadcast 6-8 games throughout the country but the only game you'll see is the one FOX has chosen to beam to your territory. So here in Vegas, the Red Sox-Rays could be playing at 10 but you will only see cartoons until the local game starts at 1.
I am relatively sure that baseball is the only business on the planet that makes it's most diehard fans chase them around with money without giving them the best possible product. Next year the MLB Network will launch, modeled after the successful NFL version, but Selig and co. are mum on the prospect of changing the rules even for their own network. Why is it that the sport with the highest median-income fanbase has so much trouble catering to them? They were all too ready to piss on the traditionalists and reach out to new fans by adopting the DH, wild card and interleague play, but refuse to throw those same purists a bone by providing them with their nightly fix. I don't get it, and I don't understand the roadblocks preventing a solution. There is no reason why baseball shouldn't compete with the increasingly unsavory NFL, but the MLB refuses to step up to the plate and take one for the team.
Today's MP3 was easy.
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