Friday, March 4, 2011

Baseball’s Blackout Policy

Yet another sign of spring, discussing MLB's idiotic Blackout policies for MLB.tv (H/T). Let me suggest one reason why the NFL gets their package right, and MLB gets theirs wrong. The NFL splits up the revenue amongst their teams evenly, so when they sell an additional package the money is split the same way as their national deal. However, MLB teams sell their games individually, so they do not want people to move from the local broadcasts to the national one.

Of course the biggest complaints are in the cases where fans are in a team's market and yet have almost no local coverage of the team. I have lived in the split market of the Royals and Cardinals for 10 years, and I have seen a grand total of one Royals game on here. You cannot even pick-up the radio broadcast until you get 20 miles north of where I am. Six teams split Iowa. There is no way that a fan in Des Moines will be able to watch every game of the Cubs, Cardinals, Royals, Twins, Brewers and White Sox on local TV. A more rational policy on blackouts would definitely be beneficial to MLB's worth.

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