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***Official - 2025 Major League Baseball Thread (11 Viewers)
- Thread starter ChiefD
- Start date
Cowboysfan8
Footballguy
Yes
Yes
ChiefD
Footballguy
Well, when I first got here last year (and even this year), they tried to block him from watching the Royals when they played at:
Twins
White Sox
Cubs
Brewers
I called the tech support number and told them:
"I'm a fan of the Royals. I did not subscribe to these other teams. The only reason I got this was to watch the Royals."
To make a long story short they asked me a bunch of questions and confirmed where I am actually located and were able to lift the blackouts in those cities for me.
Amazing that worked. Very glad to hear it. I might have to try it.
rockaction
Footballguy
The commissioner is quite possibly the least concerned about fans in all of sports. Well, maybe Bettman. But Goodell and Silver at least pay lip service to the fans. Silver knows that his recalcitrant athletes that don't really want to play the season have to anyway. He created a tournament in the middle of the darn season. Goodell takes his booing at the draft well and presents a fan-friendly facade about the television stuff. I personally think the NFL would knife its fans in the back if they thought it would make them five bucks, but he at least addresses fan concerns in the fakest of ways.
Manfred? He doesn't even bother. This guy is as gutless and conniving as they come. He (and apparently the owners) don't really care about if the game grows nor do they care about their capital outlays in the long run. If they did, they'd actually make sure the games were broadcast so that people could see them. I'm not sure whether they've given up and know the sport is dying or what they're thinking. It reeks and so does he.
If you weren't such a straight shooter there is no way I'd believe this.
ChiefD
Footballguy
Yeah, I was shocked too.
But considering how many games the Royals play with the Twins and White Sox (which both cities are about 3.5 hours from me), I would miss a fair amount of games.
Just dumb how their blackout rules are. They have terrible lawyers.
This day and age I don't understand why they have blackout rules. Advertising is a huge reason they make money. If you get the TV package for all games why can't you get the blackout games but only the home team telecast so you get all the ads. Seems like that would still get them what they want for the most part.
The world has changed. Blackouts should adjust too. Plus why cut off home town teams from being seen by kids? Show as many games as possible. Baseball is still much better in person so showing games on TV doesn't really take that away.
kupcho1
Footballguy
I swear I'm not singling you out today GB, but man, this is so far off the mark I've got to jump in. Not w/r/t Manfred or Bettman (I have no opinion on Silver as I don't follow the NBA), but with Goodell. Manfred and Bettman aren't great, but Goodell is the absolute worst in terms of fan service. And not just in terms of NFL fans, but fans of football in general. Fridays have traditionally been reserved for High School football. Not this week. There's a game Friday night. And I'm sure the fans of whichever team is the home team are thrilled that it's being held in Brazil.
MLB, NHL and NBA (or so I'm told) will hold games overseas, but two points to keep in mind:
1. there are far more games in the regular season for those leagues, so one or two lost games isn't as meaningful
2. Baseball, hockey and basketball are international sports. The international markets they choose to visit are pipelines to their leagues. American football isn't.
Goodell and the NFL keep trying to make fetch happen, but for the most part, the people attending games overseas are predominantly expats and vacationers. Europeans and South Americans youths aren't going to stop playing soccer for this.
I do agree with you 100000000% on the NFL's greed. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'd rather be between a mother bear and her cubs than between the NFL and a dollar lying on the ground.
rockaction
Footballguy
Oh, we agree and I don't think you're singling me out. Sometimes there's a day when somebody you know is throwing down and you just see a nuance you think they're missing or you just want to shoot the breeze and add your opinion and where you think they might be missing it.
I'm going to say again that we agree and that words like "facade," and "lip service," and that I think the NFL would stab us in a heartbeat for five bucks is meant to convey that Goodell's act is just that—an act, and that he couldn't care less if we were getting our backs broken eating cold porridge with barely any clothes and holes in our socks in the Green Bay winter. I'm saying that he at least fakes it (even if that fakery is just to get that five bucks from our pockets). There's an element of acknowledging just by dancing for the puppet master that the fan is actually in control.
Manfred does none of that. He is so ruthless that he can't even stop to care about punctilio. His recent row with Bryce Harper was typical. Sort of strong-arming the players to have these informal meetings without the MLBPA there so he can introduce or lay the groundwork for a salary cap (you should read the article in the Athletic about it) was typical of who he is, or at least who he is in my estimation. I'm hardly a baseball player's union guy (who is?) but this commissioner is odious as far as I'm concerned and he almost never addresses any issue from the point of view of the fan. I just tuned back in to baseball, so I might have missed what reasoning he gave for the pitch clock, but I don't remember (and I could be totally wrong) him paying real lip service to the fans, which should have made it a slam dunk. I think he went straight to television ratings and attendance as it affected the revenues of the clubs—not the fans' enjoyment.
Anyway, we really agree. I think that my distinction between Goodell and Manfred is not one of saintliness, but of method.
rockaction
Footballguy
This is basketball, but I heard the new MLB television rights deal will be awful. What worries me is that I hadn’t heard any news about the NBA deal, which leads me to believe that if the business reporters were leading their industry news with stories about the new baseball rights deal, and you could tell the reporters were intoning (without having all the facts at their disposal) that it seemed extra ****ty for baseball fans from what they were hearing, and that the level of badness made it newsworthy; and it was a big enough cluster**** so that you didn’t hear a peep about how crappy the NBA deal was—I can’t even imagine how ****ty the new MLB deal will be. Oof.
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rockaction
Footballguy
Here are the beginnings of the new MLB TV rights deal. The journalist editorializes without all the facts, but I surmise that he’s correct.
sports.yahoo.com
The way you watch baseball on TV is going to change in 2026
… and not necessarily for the better.
Instinctive
Footballguy
FWIW blackouts are a thing TV networks make happen, not the leagues. Leaguespass Sunday ticket mlbtv would all love to just let you see all your teams games and have no issues.
But the broadcast partners make a huge deal about it, so they pay for it to be in there so it is.
But the broadcast partners make a huge deal about it, so they pay for it to be in there so it is.
How do the TV networks benefit from blacking out showing a game on TV? I am confused by this
Instinctive
Footballguy
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what y'all mean by blackout.
If a game is televised by someone, they want it blacked out by any league run competitor. There's generally two types:
1. National broadcast - blacked out everywhere
Example: if the game is on ESPN, you can't watch it on Leaguespass.
2. Regional broadcast - blacked out everywhere they can defensibly call their region
Example: NESN wants you to watch the Red Sox on NESN. So if you live in Mass (and possibly anywhere else they think is their market that they could get defined) then you can't get any game they broadcast on MLBtv. NESN sees it as making you subscribe to them, that's why they bought the Sox games for their inventory.
Where this sucks is traveling. So you're from Dallas now, but you're a fan of the Cubs where you grew up, and you've traveled to Indianapolis for work. You can't stream the Cubs games suddenly. And you don't love there so it's not like you could get the local cable network or whatever that carries them. So you get screwed.
This is the version I am talking about. But why can't they show the NESN broadcast on the MLBTv version you are watching. You would still see all the local commercials etc.
I guess the real culprit is the "make you subscribe to NESN" aspect. I would think that MLBTv could work something out in those cases to get NESN money from it. It's just all them greedy bastards causing fans to suffer.
ETA: The biggest craptastic issue with this is in an area where you don't have access to the local network. So you get blocked from watching the game and you have no other way of watching it. That's how it where I live for the Dodgers. I can't get the network the games are on in my area and yet MLBTv blacks out the Dodger games because I am in their area. So I get screwed from every direction (if I want to watch the Dodgers).
Instinctive
Footballguy
Bolded: yes. exactly. NESN doesn't want to pay MLBtv a pass through though (there's no universe they get as much money from MLBtv being able to watch a game per person as they do from a cable subscription. That would blow my mind).
Your ETA: yes, exactly. This needs antitrust or some other kind of challenge, but it's hard to find a class or a deep enough pocketed individual to go get it. And to define the damages. It's whatever RSN carries the Dodgers' fault mainly, in this case, although you'd like to think the MLBtv guys (which are separate from MLB, technically) would at least try to say "this is an idiotic restriction, these people can't buy your product anyway they should be able to buy ours," because then they'd sell more subs.
rockaction
Footballguy
That wasn't true for the NFL and other events. There once (and I am not sure if this still happens) were blackouts where the club and league would blackout local games that weren't sold out. I think this is an old NFL thing. It was definitely because they wanted the gate receipts.
dkp993
Footballguy
Same for me. Blacked out for Padres, Dodgers and Angles. Could make a case for the Pads as I’m 60miles from the stadium. But Dodgers? And the most infuriating part, I buy the MLB package to be able to watch the Pads, but it’s still blacked out against the Dodgers, even if it’s on “cable” (ie Sunday night baseball on ESPN, etc). So 13 games a year against our main rival and I can’t see it, even though I’ve paid for it. Unreal.
ChiefD
Footballguy
I would call mlbtv.com tech support and see if they can lift it for you. Worth a try.
Explain that you bought the package for the padres and you are NOT a dodgers fan or angels fan.
dkp993
Footballguy
Oh, I tried last year. The LA mafia was too strong, they basically told me to pound sand, in the nicest way of course. “ sorry sir. There’s nothing we can do. We’re not in charge of…”
Apparently I don’t have your charm.
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