Comment by jen20 17 hours ago
I for one wish it would go further. Despite being in Austin, I often can't watch the Astros - as if I'm going to drive a six hour round trip to go to every game otherwise - without subscribing to some channel which is inevitably only available with companies I don't want to do business with. I'd happily pay ~300/yr for a streaming subscription that gets me all those games though...
I hate the AppleTV thing for baseball. I pay for the MLB.TV package yet those games aren't included unless I also buy an AppleTV subscription.
College football is going the same way with ESPN and FOX properties on cable/streaming but also needing Peacock, Paramount+ and I think AppleTV next season.
For MLS the deal has been pretty good I think. Mainly because everything is all in one place.
The MLB package is very up-front about not being all-inclusive: it advertises "out-of-market" games -- games you can't otherwise access. Games on streaming services like Apple and Peacock count the same as broadcasts on ESPN, FS1, or TBS: national broadcasts available behind a paywall.
Yeah the out-of-market-only rules of the national sports subscriptions is really goofy. I guess they’re trying to protect the Comcasts of the world who own a lot of those regional sports networks where the baseball games are shown, because they pay a lot for those deals and would probably refuse to pay as much if MLB let MLB.tv have them. But it still sucks.
That's my biggest complaint as well. The MLB streaming service needs to have an everything tier. I understand that teams want to sell rights locally, but figure it out. Charge me whatever you need to charge me and share the revenue with the local team. Just make it easy for me to watch!
I too live in Austin and I watched more Toronto Blue Jays, SF Giants, and LA Dodgers games than Rangers games this year.
I'd happily pay ~300/yr for a streaming subscription that gets me all those games though...
If you can get along with audio only, Sirius has a subscription that includes every MLB game.
AFAIK, the MLB.tv subscription includes full audio for every game, including in-market games.
My understanding of the issue is that MLB sold off the TV rights to local games years ago to the RSN (Regional Sports Networks) and the contracts have yet to expire. Rumor has it that around 2028 or so, they will try to rein them back in.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5933299/2024/11/19/mlb-plan...
They're already doing so. There are a number of teams (six, eight? something like that) that already have local coverage packages with MLB, and Seattle is joining the crowd next year.
Baseball's biggest issue is that their biggest teams are also co-owners of their cable channels (and were trailblazers in this, with the Yankees and the YES Network). They don't care if you go to the game, they want you to get a cable subscription that has your local RSN, ESPN, TBS, your local FOX affiliate, and FS1 so that you can watch your team play. And that's not including games that may wind up on streaming platforms.
The post you replied to included this:
> I read that part of baseball's decline from the premiere American sport was due to its outdated revenue model (strict reliance on ticket sales). The NFL in 80s really embraced TV and reached more fans and here we are. MLB has been recently way ahead of the curve on streaming (MLB.tv, AWS StatCast etc).
I'm _hoping_ (although numbers don't seem to be showing it as a huge success as of yet) is that the Apple-MLS deal works well enough that other leagues are at least open to the idea of a no-blackout, all-inclusive package.