It’s that time of the year. Christmas is coming up and I have a few items on my list that I would like to materialize and magically appear under a Christmas tree. If I could choose one, though, what would it be?
For MLB Blackouts to End
Living in Las Vegas, NV, we have no MLB team that we can call our own. Yet somehow, we have six teams that claim us to be in their TV market. That’s right, the Oakland Athletics, San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Angels, San Diego Padres, and Arizona Diamondbacks all have TV rights to the Las Vegas market.
That means, if I subscribe to MLB.TV, I can’t watch any game on MLB.TV that involves any of those six teams.
If you ask MLB about it, they’ll say “Those games can be found on those team’s regional sports networks”.
That would be great, but my cable provider only provides Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket. Meaning, I’ll get the Angels, and once in the blue moon to fill time Prime Ticket will pick up the D-Backs.
So that what does MLB then say? You’re pretty much out of luck.
The day and age of blackout restrictions needs to end. You can make a case for Arizona and the SoCal teams, but there is no reason why Oakland and San Francisco should get my local TV rights if they are more than eight hours away in another state. Add to that, my cable provider doesn’t even carry the regional sports networks that carry the Giants, A’s, Padres, D-Backs, and the Dodger games.
As if the blackout restrictions weren’t enough, fans are also victims of feuds between rights holders and competing cable companies that have to buy those rights to carry specific regional sports channels.
Before the 2014 season started, Dodger fans in Las Vegas used to be able to watch the majority of Dodger games on Prime Ticket. Those rights expired after the 2013 season allowing the Dodgers and Time Warner to team up and start a new channel called “SportsNet LA”.
It has been one full season since the Dodgers have launched their new channel. Guess who carries that channel? Nobody except Time Warner and smaller carriers that Time Warner owns. Neither of the two major satellite TV providers, Dish and DirecTV, have the rights to carry the channel either.
That leaves two options for Dodger fans in this predicament: use vpn software to trick MLB.TV into thinking you’re in a different market than the Dodgers’ TV market (which probably violates the terms of agreement with MLB.TV), or find a local bar and hope by some miracle that it’s not blacked out there and that they have the game on.
If anyone is willing to pay, they should be able to watch whatever team they want without having to jump through ten hoops to do so.
If MLB commissioner Rob Manfred wants to do something his predecessor has swept under the rug all these years, it’s time he gets this issue addressed and makes it easier for fans to watch their teams. If he’s really good, he won’t just redraw TV rights boundaries, he’ll fight to remove them completely.
Maybe I’m asking too much for Christmas.
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