Extraneous – definition: (from dictionary.com)
1) not belonging or proper to a thing; external; foreign
2) not pertinent; irrelevant
Sometimes I forget that I’m spoilt rotten, living in the same city as my baseball team. I can go to the games for $5 – 12 bucks a seat and I can watch every single game on just plain ol cable TV right here. Unfortunately, not everyone is lucky enough to be able to watch their team on TV. Sure you can buy (satellite) XM radio and LISTEN, or “watch” on mlb.com, but watch a live game, nope. I had always thought if you paid enough, you could watch just about anything on cable, but wronggggg. For reasons I just do not understand, MLB blacks out certain games in certain territories if you pay for mlbtv (Extra Innings.) (from ondemand.com) “If you live in a zip code area that falls within an MLB team’s home television territory, that team’s games will be blacked-out from MLB EXTRA INNINGS. These games will generally be available on that team’s RSN or team affiliated OTA station. Blackouts protect the local rightsholders who arrange separate distribution agreements for their exclusive territories.”
Unfortunately, this means that IF your RSN does not broadcast the games, you can’t see them. It also means that if you travel and want to see games when you are away from home, you can’t (as my mama found out.) The territories are often huge and overlapping, and already many fans can’t watch their team under the current setup.
This year, not only is MLB continuing its blackout patterns, but they have made a 7 year exclusive deal with DirectTV to broadcast Extra Innings only through them – Maury Brown of www.bizofbaseball.com explains: http://www.bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=635&Itemid=52
Me, I do NOT get this at ALL. This means that no households with cable or other satellite services can get Extra Innings. This will DECREASE the number of people watching Extra Innings. Which means they will have to really increase the price of a subscription. Which means that a whole lot of people won’t subscribe who used to. The new stadiums which are being planned and built are decreasing the number of available seats AND the number of available seats sold to just plain fans, not corporations. If fewer fans can go to games or watch their team on TV, how is this supposed to increase the popularity of the game? Will there be bootleg broadcasts? Or will they just charge for mlb.com from now on? Seems to me that the more you limit who can watch a game, either in person, or on TV, the fewer people will be interested in it. And when fewer people watch or care, they won’t take their kids to games, watch games with their kids and the kids won’t play ball, and fewer people will grow up fans.
Seems to me that most people just really don’t care about the future – deal with what is happening now, and whatever happens later, happens. Maybe having a mother who is a CPA has, um, kinda, let’s say, influenced me, but I think you HAVE to consider the future and plan for it. Because stuff happens. And not caring if you lose fans who watch in person or on TV is just plain dumb.
And as for getting more money from the fewer tickets that will me more in demand they then sell to corporations for a higher price, let me tell you this – I have watched ball games from most every seat in the ballpark (except for the extra ritzy area where Drayton McLane and George and Barbara Bush and all the other celebs sit.) And I can tell you this – the business people who come to ball games don’t know a baseball from a soccer ball and they spend the entire game talking business. And yes I mean men – and yes there are men who honest to GAWD got NO idea how many players there are on a roster, or even how many players there are on the field, let alone the rules, even the basic ones, of the game. I promise you, they are not fans. Sure they clap when the whosis guy catches the ball. Sure they know who Roger Clemens is. But these are not people who will take their sons to Little League, and let me remind you that these days, kids don’t just go in the streets and play ball, and that pretty much only kids from upper income families play baseball.
You can’t afford to lose your fan base.
Fortunately for the Astros, the vast majority of Astros fans live in Houston, or at least in Texas and Louisiana where FSN broadcasts the games, so we won’t be affected by the Extra Innings loss as so many other fans will…
Tags: MLB
And now you know why I have to subscribe to DirecTV and pay $130 per year to TiVo all the ‘stros’ games. What’s interesting to me is that MLB doesn’t really get that much for the deal. It’s $100M/year, which is around $3M per team. Doesn’t seem like it matters very much given the problems the exclusivity causes. I guess it’s the tradeoff to get the MLB station on basic+ cable. Whatever.
The worst part is living here in Iowa I’m blacked out of 6 different teams. I’m considered home market for Cubs, White Sox, Twins, Brewers, Royals and Cardinals. I didn’t realize this until I bought the extra innings package last year. I picked it up as a Cubs fan so I could catch the rest of the teams in the central, but as I listed 1/2 the teams are blacked out. Luckily I still get WGN and Comcast which carry 90% of the Cubs games, but it was a lot of wasted $$ for me.
And this is why having the best play-by-play commentators on the radio is a must. I get so frustrated at some of the comments the TV commentators that I would just turn off the sound and turn on the radio. Now, more often than not, I’d turn on the radio and forget about the TV, with all the stupid blackouts and such.
You are right, Lisa, MLB is not trying to get more fans. It’s about the money and more money. Even then, you’d think they’ll try to broaden the fan base so more money can be made in the future.
steve,
well if it’s me, i want to sell a package to whoever will get me the most customers (future fans) not just the highest bidder.
i guess i think of it like this – suppose i was a ballplayer and i was given a choice of a 5 year minor league contract – i would have to stay in A-ball for 5 years and i would get 10 mill for 5 years, or i would get a 1 year ML contract for the ML minimum. the 10 mill up front is great, but i would be stuck in A ball…
- silent bob,
i guess if i was in your shoes – and i think the blackout policy is stupid beyond belief – i would get XM radio and watch the “game” on cbssportsline.com. but then again, i’m fan enough to do something like that. but if i’d never been able to watch a big league game, starting from the fact that females aren’t allowed to play baseball so you couldn’t get interested in it that way, i seriously doubt i’d ever would have been a fan in the first place.
hi alvin!!!
SURE i understand business – you WANT to make as much money as possible. i disbelieve that anyone ever played professional ball for the sake of the game, or something silly like that, like all the misty eyed old timers/sportswriters want us to think. and the owners were always trying to make $$$ too – look at that shithead charlie comisky.
so you can go the walmart way or the designer stores in beverly hills way.
best i can tell, most of the the interest in football is 70% gambling and 30% fantasizing about screwing the cheerleaders. or talking about the players personal lives. don’t nobody seem to ever talk about the actual game strategy like we do in baseball. it’s all about the point spread. yawn.
there isn’t real too much gambling in baseball like there is in football, so if people can’t actually see the games, even if you get a whole lot of corporations to buy the tickets, the number of actual fans will drop like a stone. especially fans not in the actual city where the stadium is, or fans who are into a brand, like the yanks or sox…
and yeah sure i can go see the rice games or the U of H games. but i’ll tell you once you been watching big leaguers, it sure is hard to be interested in watching players with such an unbelieveably lower skill level…
- hi didi!!!
and we are stuck with ANOTHER year of dolan and raymond. bleccccch,
lisa
The NFL has been doing the same thing forever. You had to have DirectTV to get their package. If you look at it from the provider it makes sense though. If I’m DirectTV and I’m the one who is going to spend a ton of $$ on marketing and putting it on my system, I don’t want my competition to have it. I would be willing to pay more to get the exclusive.
Fans have to realize sports is the same as the movies, video games or Broadway. Sports is an entertainment business. We can all pine for the good old days when sports were not about being profitable but that was so long ago, I bet most people reading your blog weren’t born.
As a businessman, I understand it. I don’t blame the owners for it but that doesn’t mean I don’t sympathize with the fans who cannot watch the games.
BTW, check out Slingbox. If you can watch the games on your TV at home, you can watch them on your laptop while traveling.
It’s just unbelievable how MLB’s greed can blind them not only to the fans’ desires (same as always), but also to their own future. What’s $3 million to a team that can pay that much to a backup infielder?
Let’s see, we’ll take our strongest supporters, and those with money to spend, and we’ll screw ‘em! Now that’s foresight.
Thank God we’ve got Brett and Dave to paint the pictures in our minds. (Sorry Lisa) Of course, it’s probably only a matter of time before they find a way to make us pay for radio broadcasts, too. (besides being subjected to the same moronic commercials 50 times a game)
Being a die hard Astros fan in Nashville was already tough enough!
But to make matters worse my housemates (2 Braves fans) and I had already pooled together the dough for Extra Innings…. now we gotta spend it all on beer just out of dissapointment.
The only thing heavier than my heart right now is my liver.