Baseball Blackouts

Discuss all things Cardinals Baseball
dmarx114
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Re: Baseball Blackouts

Post by dmarx114 »

Birdfan57 wrote:
September 22 22, 10:44 am
This is such a weird situation. I have AT&T cable TV in So Cal. I get Dodgers on Spectrum Sports and the Angels channel on Bally Sports. So when their games are on MLB Channel, it's blacked out. No big deal to me since I have both teams channels on my cable and watch them there.
But I have a friend that lives in Las Vegas. He has Dish Network and neither the Dodgers or Angels network are offered on Dish. But he can not watch the Dodgers, Angels, Padres, Giants or A's games on MLB Channel, these are all "local teams" for Las Vegas whether they are at home or playing on the East coast. Local teams? He lives 300 miles from LA, 275 from Anaheim, 330 from San Diego, 500 from SF or Oakland. Only way he sees these teams games is on the local Las Vegas Fox channel for Saturday games, ESPN, or Fox Sports 1. This doesn't make sense.
So I don't have Apple + or other special channels so I don't get to watch the Cardinals Friday night game against the Dodgers on TV because of the game being on Apple+, have to watch on MLB.TV on my laptop. Not crazy about watching games on the computer.
This won't work on Friday. MLB TV doesn't carry Apple+ games.

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Transmogrified Tiger
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Re: Baseball Blackouts

Post by Transmogrified Tiger »

IIRC the Apple games do not require a separate subscription, so you can either watch them through Apple on a laptop or on a TV if your TV supports an app for it.

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ghostrunner
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Re: Baseball Blackouts

Post by ghostrunner »

I'd just like to hear owners explain the thinking behind them. Not why they exist at all. Though that's also a justifable question. But specifically "Why are places 4 hours away included? How is Iowa's situation justifiable? Don't you think this is hurting the sport long term?" Etc, etc...

If this had just started I'd expect they were getting data saying that game attendance regularly pulls from distant areas enough that it's justified. But the practice is so old, I find it hard to believe that's the basis. And I'd imagine the data would show that most attendance is within a 2-hour radius.

To that end, some more confrontational journalism would be welcome.

Birdfan57
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Re: Baseball Blackouts

Post by Birdfan57 »

dmarx114 wrote:
September 22 22, 12:23 pm
Birdfan57 wrote:
September 22 22, 10:44 am
This is such a weird situation. I have AT&T cable TV in So Cal. I get Dodgers on Spectrum Sports and the Angels channel on Bally Sports. So when their games are on MLB Channel, it's blacked out. No big deal to me since I have both teams channels on my cable and watch them there.
But I have a friend that lives in Las Vegas. He has Dish Network and neither the Dodgers or Angels network are offered on Dish. But he can not watch the Dodgers, Angels, Padres, Giants or A's games on MLB Channel, these are all "local teams" for Las Vegas whether they are at home or playing on the East coast. Local teams? He lives 300 miles from LA, 275 from Anaheim, 330 from San Diego, 500 from SF or Oakland. Only way he sees these teams games is on the local Las Vegas Fox channel for Saturday games, ESPN, or Fox Sports 1. This doesn't make sense.
So I don't have Apple + or other special channels so I don't get to watch the Cardinals Friday night game against the Dodgers on TV because of the game being on Apple+, have to watch on MLB.TV on my laptop. Not crazy about watching games on the computer.
This won't work on Friday. MLB TV doesn't carry Apple+ games.
Just wonderful.

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NDark
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Re: Baseball Blackouts

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JoeMcKim
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Re: Baseball Blackouts

Post by JoeMcKim »

I think that the single team package should be blackout free. If you want the package where you get all of the games I can kind of to an extent understand blackouts. But when you buy the single team package and you're only wanting to watch a single team then you should be able to watch all of your teams games. There is only like a 20 dollar difference between the full package and single team option now. Not sure why anyone bothers to get the single team option now when there isn't that much of a difference in price over a 6 month season.

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Kincaid
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Re: Baseball Blackouts

Post by Kincaid »

Famous Mortimer wrote:
September 22 22, 9:40 am
(although there's a highway direct to Chicago where it's not as easy to drive to Milwaukee, and I presume Cubs and White Sox games aren't blacked out in Iowa. The rule is still bad and will have a negative effect on baseball)
Not only are the Cubs and White Sox blacked out in Iowa, so too are the Cardinals, Royals, and Twins. Iowa is notoriously one of the worst places for MLB's blackouts.
[SHOW]
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ghostrunner
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Re: Baseball Blackouts

Post by ghostrunner »

I feel like a politician in Iowa could pick up some cheap votes by picking a fight on this.

Anyway, it's just ludicrous.

The odds are extremely high that owners have very good data on who is coming to the ballpark and know exactly where they're coming from. At the place I work, we know exactly where people who go to local tourist destinations come from. We don't have names but we have phone IDs so with some confidence we can see where they came from, how long they stay, which destinations they hit.

So I'm curious if their data is showing them that a significant number of ticket buyers come from more than 2 hours away. That would surprise me, but maybe so. I'd assume MLB tv revenue would be shared among teams though, so they should be getting something either way

Or maybe they really aren't collecting this data and are just stuck on this old policy, which would really surprise me.

I wonder if they worry that MLBtv is cannibalizing cable package sales, but I find that hard to believe too.

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pioneer98
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Re: Baseball Blackouts

Post by pioneer98 »

Kincaid wrote:
November 6 22, 8:48 am
Famous Mortimer wrote:
September 22 22, 9:40 am
(although there's a highway direct to Chicago where it's not as easy to drive to Milwaukee, and I presume Cubs and White Sox games aren't blacked out in Iowa. The rule is still bad and will have a negative effect on baseball)
Not only are the Cubs and White Sox blacked out in Iowa, so too are the Cardinals, Royals, and Twins. Iowa is notoriously one of the worst places for MLB's blackouts.
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Brewers are also blacked out in Iowa

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pioneer98
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Re: Baseball Blackouts

Post by pioneer98 »

ghostrunner wrote:
November 6 22, 10:18 am
I feel like a politician in Iowa could pick up some cheap votes by picking a fight on this.

Anyway, it's just ludicrous.

The odds are extremely high that owners have very good data on who is coming to the ballpark and know exactly where they're coming from. At the place I work, we know exactly where people who go to local tourist destinations come from. We don't have names but we have phone IDs so with some confidence we can see where they came from, how long they stay, which destinations they hit.

So I'm curious if their data is showing them that a significant number of ticket buyers come from more than 2 hours away. That would surprise me, but maybe so. I'd assume MLB tv revenue would be shared among teams though, so they should be getting something either way

Or maybe they really aren't collecting this data and are just stuck on this old policy, which would really surprise me.

I wonder if they worry that MLBtv is cannibalizing cable package sales, but I find that hard to believe too.
Now combine all this with the fact MLB contracted 2 affiliated minor league teams in Iowa, and nearly contracted a third team

The two places that lost teams are both in one of those college summer wood bat leagues now, and one of them led that league in attendance. I went to more games there than the affiliated MiLB team in my town because it's so much more affordable, even with the extra 40 minutes of driving

The Field of Dreams games are like MLBs one good thing they've done for Iowa in the past 30 years

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