Baseball's Media Blackout Crisis 

Precisely

Thanks a ton for the support!

Yeah - and that's my biggest worry. There absolutely are fans of the sport that would pay for this. But there aren't many - and they are decreasing in numbers. Baseball needs to decide what the actual product is. If it wants people interested in the sport again, it needs to make sure the sport is where the people are.

There's a reason why the companies that offer cable television are the same companies that offer internet services.

I agree with you, but only partially. Baseball did have a national following up until the 1990s. The "baseball has always been a regional sport" argument seems to have come up after the 1994 strike, when baseball did indeed become more of a regional sport. I was looking through newspapers from December 1899 the other day. Rochester, New York had extensive coverage of National League rumors and trades, even though there was no major league team in the area. You could find similar coverage in other cities, including cities with minor league teams. The radio broadcasts were also not limited to region. Mutual had a program called Game of the Day that served major league baseball broadcasts to non-MLB markets on a regular basis.

Even in the newspaper era, cities without big league teams still covered the Major Leagues, but usually focused more on local minor league teams. Time investment for listeners viewers is always a factor; during the radio days, local games often drew more listeners than national games, a trend that persists today. The TV landscape has dramatically changed since the 1980s and early 1990s, with a significant increase in broadcast options and methods. While I won’t argue that it is better , it's clear that baseball understands its primary audience, which differs from where the bulk of NFL's audience is.

Yep - you're right. Thank you!

Thanks! I appreciate the kind words. Of course, what I really wish is that they'd fix this problem instead... but I don't think that will happen anytime soon, sadly.

Yeah - we're still in the area, too. We're further out in the suburbs now - it's a bit less hectic than the Tyson's Corner area, lol.

I want to be a Michigan sports fan, I really do. The lions are my team and I want to be a fan of the other city teams, but it’s hard when you live in the south and can’t access Bally Sports or whatever it is. Major pita

I seriously hope that you're right about the sport growing. It feels like it's been shrinking for my whole life. I really hope the White Sox don't leave Chicago. It's bad enough seeing the A's leave Oakland.

@@baseballreplayjournal it might only be a temporary resurgence since the pandemic honestly. But yeah it’s sad what happened to the A’s and it feels like the Sox are trending in that direction just based on the vibe around the team and at the stadium. I’m starting to worry it will get louder soon when the stadium plans and die stall due to lack of public funding and a cheap owner

Yeah - and the worst part about the monopoly is that you wind up paying for the privilege of watching advertising messages. That's not to say that commercials are bad; I know they're necessary. It just feels wrong to cover something with ads when people are paying extra for it already.

@@baseballreplayjournal Exactly. I flat out refuse to pay for a service that shows commercials.

Glad you appreciated them! There's more where that came from.

MLB umpires assert themselves too much into the game.

Interesting to hear that the radio adverts are different in Europe. MLB's online video streams still suffer from blank screens that say something like "the game will return shortly." This is an indication that MLB continues to struggle to sell advertising space for its online streams - likely because advertisers don't see it as lucrative as slots during television broadcasts, for whatever reason. You'd think there would be an easy solution to this issue, but I guess not. It confuses me.

The video stresmx here get those "ad ongoing" screens to, and when they display, the radio plays the applause

Listening to a game is fun! I had a nice experience as a kid, listening to the radio to a game while in my dad's big rig.

I can watch any game anytime with a Google search. Lol I didn’t even know they still did black outs Edit: for free.99

It's 30 this year or u can listen on sirus if you have that

The east stream

Reminds me of my childhood best friends dad living in 3099 who would listen on the radio but have the tv in the his garage on, the radio was like 9 seconds ahead so if something cool happened he could shuffle to the garage lol legend

The guardians didn't claim my zip code so I've been able to tune into their games through audio. The pirates claimed it, though, and I'm pretty sure that the regional networks have been pulled from direcTV and Dish. I don't know how people are able to watch their team when the only option in an area with horrid internet infrastructure doesn't carry the games.

I would say the Pirates are worse. They claim almost all of PA and have for decades. Even places that have never had pirate games on local TV or cable.

Oh, I would say Bally is much worse Ever since they snatched away what was once very good in the Fox Sports regional networks, their product has been by far more inferior and absolute hot garbage To make matters worse, at least in terms of the market I am in (Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN) while we can watch the Timberwolves, Wild, and Lynx without the need for a cable subscription via Bally Sports Plus, in order to watch the Twins, for some inexplicable reason, those bozos at Diamond Sports Group/Sinclair (the owner of the Bally networks) decided that enough was enough and have forced you into needing a cable or satellite subscription if you want to watch the Twins along with those aforementioned teams And on top of that, there’s a whole brouhaha ongoing between DSG and Comcast/Xfinity, which means that a good chunk of people either at home or at bars still are currently unable to watch the games because of the ongoing contract dispute they’re having So all in all, the whole regional sports network landscape is quite a mess right now, and I sure hope in the near future we finally get away from this whole mess and instead can just go right through the leagues with whatever subscriptions they offer without this stupid, silly, blackout thing that they are still doing

I agree. People will tell you that baseball has always been a regional sport. That's true to an extent - but people also used to tune into the World Series in large numbers. That really died off with the 1994 strike. MLB's response was to push regional sports networks and expanded playoffs. The result has really hurt the game's popularity on the national stage.