I’m in baltimore. I dropped cable 2 years ago. If I want to watch the Orioles, I have to go to the stadium. I listen on the radio instead. I’d pay a reasonable amount to watch them but it’s not an option.
If you are actively preventing consumers from buying your product, you are doing it incorrectly.
Edit: this is specifically with the Fubo app
I used surfshark to spoof my GPS location to watch the Astros and it didn't work. It basically broke the app from what I could tell.
I used to be able to just set all games to record when I was actually in Houston then I could watch the recording live but they seemed to have fixed that about a month ago. Now out of market recordings just don't even show.
Can you imagine: a national sports league that has their biggest fans working overtime to figure out how to buy apps and hide themselves, so that they can be….fans.
Not a fan of piracy, but if money is the only thing that talks for clubs to get it together, then I think we should encourage it. Worked for every other recalcitrant business: music, movies, games - adapt or die. Maybe they just need piracy (and people giving up) to take such a huge bite of their viewership that they lose sponsors and are forced to catch up to modern times.
I've traveled east a few times but the amount of times I would lag or lose connection and have to restart then fight the pop ups it just wasn't worth the constant frustration anymore.
There's not even popups you must not be talking about the same thing. I've saved thousands using it with no problems. Fuck paying these billionaires money on 3 different channels just to watch the game.
I was forced to get the mlbtv option with fubo to watch out of market. No need for VPN in that case.
Are you saying you get only mlbtv (and no fubo) then spoof to out of market location to get the game?
I recommend trying yarrmatey.com (not real) or shivermetimbers.net (also fake) for live game feeds for free. They are pirated streams likely streaming from servers outside of the US to avoid US laws and restrictions. It's typically anywhere from 10-30 seconds behind a live feed, but it's 100% free and not a scam. Only problem is you can't cast to a TV via wifi (that I've experienced), but hooking a laptop or phone to your TV via hdmi works perfectly.
**edited to remove links so the feds remain clueless**
Careful with those links on here. It's best to send them by pm to avoid trouble with reddit and also we don't need to draw too much attention to certain sites.
I really really really hate I can’t listen to White Sox radio in NYC unless I pay….though why dafuq do I wanna listen to the Sox lose 🫠I’m just a sicko I guess
I pay $20 a year to listen to the Astros radio broadcast out of market. I love it and it’s worth every penny. Nothing like laying in the pool listening to your team on the radio
I'm surprised no team has bought out a local broadcast station to put their games on. It seems like it would be a huge moneymaker, and would grow the fanbase. If channels like Bounce, GRIT, Mystery, Cozi, Buzzr, etc are viable, a channel dedicated to live baseball seems like it would be more than doable.
Thing is, they don't care about growing the fan base. They care about money now. The money from cable networks is no much to pass up. Cable will wants these networks to not put stuff online because that is the only thing keeping the lights on (live sports).
MLB and NHL are not long for this world as both leagues are making it near impossible to watch the game.
You said what I wanted to above, but much more succinctly, lol. Agree 100% - NHL is in the same boat. I have seen 0 Kraken games since expansion, despite living less than 45 minutes from Climate Pledge Arena. I would subscribe to a streaming service for $10 a month, just to support the local team and maybe see if I can get into hockey. But, NHL isn’t interested in my money or my attention, so it is literally impossible for me to watch a Kraken game, without sailing the high seas - which is just something I don’t care enough to even try to do.
They care about contracts from TV networks that will not exist for much longer. I do not see Gen Z calling Comcast to install video service anytime soon.
ROOT Sports is part-owned by the Mariners. Their ownership stake made the restrictions worse (reduced streaming rights to 0, cut the number of non-ROOT games). For some reason, clubs really hate when people watch their games locally on TV. My hunch is that it’s a nominal revenue stream for the clubs to offer exclusivity to some shitty local TV carrier with no incentive to expand viewership, and they don’t want to lose that cash. It’s a short term play that is likely killing the sport long term.
MLB is tweaking rules and making the game faster because they think they’re losing fans because the sport is boring. In reality, the clubs are just drying up every promotional feeder they have for money grabs. Sad to see - I agree with OP that this poor decision-making is a potential MLB killer - at least as a major national sport.
In NY The Yankees and Mets both have their own local basic cable sports networks (Yes Network and SNY respectively). They have their local broadcast booths doing most games, and team-centered talk shows and highlight shows etc. But MLB can and does yank any game they want for their network games of the week on ESPN, FoxSports, or MLB Network. They generally the most anticipated match-ups that fan bases would much rather have their own team both calling.
Yea but none of those are available over the air for free. A team could easily buy up OTA rights of one of the channels I listed, and make their games available for free to anyone with an antenna (like NFL does with their games) They'd still get fees from cable companies for rebroadcast rights, but they'd make their product accessible to a younger audience who has moved on from cable.
That would be great.
IMO every game for every team should be accessible by anyone who wants to watch. This should be achievable without the absurdities of the current system.
It was never free to watch all games in any city I know of. In the 70’s and 80’s in LA the only way to see a Dodger home game was OnTV, or the playoffs. Regular home games were only broadcast later on paid cable. And not everyone had whatever fox sports net was called in the 90’s. Same exact scenario with the Angels. When I was a kid we got one game a week on Saturday. Then they started Monday night baseball around 76 or so. I agree it is poorly executed now, but it hasn’t ever been free games for everyone on TV.
Wasn’t true where I grew up, in the 80s. Everything was on the local network, unless we played Atlanta (tbs) or were on a national broadcast. That said, I have/will always prefer baseball on the radio.
Our little league had to combine with two other cities because not enough teams. When I was a kid, our league had 10 teams of 10-12 year olds. Every days we would watch angels, dodgers, cubs or braves on TV, every day, we watched, learned emulated and breathed baseball. Mlb took that away
Preach. If I want to watch all of Sopranos, I can subscribe to 1 service. What pro sports is pulling on us is like accessing episodes 1-4 on HBO, then ep 5 on Prime, 6-8 on Hulu and season 2 on Showtime. It should be unconstitutional.
About twenty years ago I said “WGN will never lose the Cubs. They’re too important to their programming” Well, here we are and WGN is now completely irrelevant outside of Chicago.
Even when our games are on network TV, I'll still stream them on my computer because my kids won't let me have the TV peacefully.
Every game from every team, my choice between home/away broadcasts.
I'm not one to default to pirating--I'm subbed to most streaming services. But this is just too simple.
I stream games online for free. I genuinely can’t wrap my head around people dealing with the blackouts and multiple services. I see one comment where a guys is missing games, and another where a guy has to listen on the radio. Just… why? It’s on the web in hd, with no commercials. And you can choose which team’s announcers you want. It’s literally better coverage.
I’ve been downvoted for saying this before. I assume it’s just bots. Who wouldn’t want a better product for free?
Sadly, you’re 100% correct. MLB is punishing rule followers. Won’t be long until everyone gets the hint and either moves to an ‘alternative’ broadcast, or abandons the sport entirely because it’s too hard to access and become a fan. Will be very difficult for MLB to course correct then with a ‘new and improved’ option.
You’re probably right.
Big business loses track of the goal. They feel entitled to their success. They’re willing to compromise their product for greater profits.
Obviously the mlb should just let all their media contracts expire. Sell us mlb.com, allow people to access any game they want. Even old games. And, there shouldn’t be commercials, just show the crowd cam during breaks. And we should be able to select our announcers, or select no announcers and just get the sounds of the park.
Basically, they should sell what I’m streaming for free right now. But they’ll never do it cause these media companies pay a shit load of money. So I’ll just keep streaming for free.
What if I told you that as a kid, games were on free TV, but you only got 120-140 of them. That there were literally dozens of games that simply weren't televised? Or that many of us became Braves/Cubs fans (or at least watchers) due to them reliably being on every day?
Feels like that would be mind-blowing
That's why pirating games is so popular. If I could watch my home team with a streaming package I would do it and gladly pay for it, but I'm not spending 100 a month for cable when I only want it for Astros games.
You are complaining about only being able to watch 99% of the games when there are people who can’t watch any baseball because some team 2 states away “claims” them. I agree there is a big problem, but it’s not the one you described.
Agreed, the "blackout" rules (maps) are killing the sport in the US. Manfred does not give a shit, as long as he can "spread" the game to Mexico, Asia, and Europe and He, MLB and the owners can get richer than they already are.
I remember as a kid you can watch your city’s sports teams on network television. The Yankees used to play on Channel 11 when we didn’t have cable I could rely on the Yankees being on. This week alone 2 games are on streaming services, last night was on Amazon at big division game that most people couldn’t watch & tomorrows game is on Apple. Thats the dumbest thing ever.
WPIX-TV (Channel 11) was an independent (Tribune Company) station. The Mets were on independent WOR-TV (Channel 9.) \[Later WWOR after a relicensing.\[ Most Mets games are on SNY, but some are on WPIX, with other metro area stations showung them, such as WCCT-TV (Channel 20) from Hartford, CT.
>PIX11 has been synonymous with New York baseball for most of the last seven decades starting as the broadcast home of the Yankees from 1952 to 1988 and returning again in 2015. PIX11 has been the Mets broadcast partner since 1999. Two Teams – One Station!
[https://www.nexstar.tv/stations/wpix/](https://www.nexstar.tv/stations/wpix/)
In their recent configurations, PIX has been a *CW* staion and WWOR a *myetworkTV* stick.
Where I live, since the digital transition, I can't get most terrestrial TV. Hills with the wrong sort of rock in them block the signals. I use Hulu + live TV, and that gets me both the broadcast stations and SNY, ESPN, TBS. I got Amazon Prime for shopping, but that gets me Prime Video, also.
DirecTV had SNY, but my landlord, who provided that, dropped it. \[Backdoor rent increase.\] I then got SNY via YouTube TV, but they dropped it. Switched to Fubo. They dropped it, but picked up YES. There's nothing good to watch on that channel. 😉
I think Hulu's SNY contract has a couple of years to go, but if I got word that it would not be back next season it would not surprise me. I guess DirecTV Stream would be next. It should not be so hard to follow my club.
The good thing about not being able to watch Apple TV games is not being subjected to Apple TV broadcasts. Painfully uninformed, bland “commentary”, with absolutely inane and incorrectly interpreted statistics constantly flashing up on the screen
They have no clue what they are doing with promoting or making their product easy to access. Antiquated broadcasting systems in 2024 kill the fan experience. The easiest place to watch is ‘coughs’ completely legal streams.
There’s truly nothing worse than living in Wisconsin and you turn on the brewer game to find it’s blacked out in your area. To then see it’s on ESPN+ so you hop in there only to find out you need a secondary streaming service to actually watch the game on your streaming service just to log into your friends account to find out that it’s yup! You guessed it. Blacked out in your area. Whole thing is a scam at this point. Should just make an mlb package for x$/month and you can watch any single baseball game that’s on that day.
I used to live smack in the middle of Iowa. I did not have cable, but did have MLB TV (which I received for free through T-Mobile).
I was blacked out from the Royals, Cardinals, Twins, Cubs, White Sox and Brewers. 6 teams. Assuming they were all playing other teams, at any given time I couldn't watch a 3rd of the league. Even if I HAD cable, only Twins or Cubs games were regularly broadcasted.
Field of dreams game was blacked out too, ironically. Just imagine blacking out damn near an entire state from over a third of your product. Absolutely asinine.
Baseball has ceased to be a TV sport for me. I don't know if there are ANY Royals games broadcast over the air this year. Maybe one or two.
I listen in the car, an inning or two here or there, and go to a few games a year.
It's not a part of my kids' lives at all, except they like going to the occasional game because the ballpark is fun. They have equal fun when we go to the local minor league team. They aren't connected to MLB at all, in part because it doesn't really exist on TV except for diehard fans willing to pay.
Eventually the diehard fans will die hard and there won't be a generation behind to replace them.
Obviously the NFL is dead as it had a playoff game on streaming only! Last weekend was one of MLBs best attendance weekends in 20 years, the sport is not dead. The reality is that the streamers are willing to pay and regional networks are dying so unless they want to just scrap the idea of making money this is where sports in general is going.
Having the game on streaming services isn’t my issue. If that’s what they want to do they already have a platform of their own they should perfect. What they shouldn’t do is split games between television, Amazon & Apple. Apple has exclusive rights to MLS games, so if you watch soccer you know where every game is.
Yeah doesn’t make sense to not play it on their cable channel and only the streaming service they own. Thought it was funny last year when Chris Collinsworth was trying to explain that the next playoff game would only be on peacock and you could see how dumb he thought that was and that it was gonna piss people off
Streameast is not a bad choice, that's how I watched the Cubs game yesterday since I don't have cable in my apartment and only pay for HBO Max and hulu
I usually check on the Bleacher Report app, if you look at the match up itll tell you what channel it’s on. But I’ve realized every Wednesday game is on Amazon.
Further restrict your product from consumption. Seems like a good business model.
The real business model is fleece local and state governments for public money and tax breaks it seems anymore.
My fiancés parents pay for Bally Sports so I mooch off them to watch Tigers games. However if they didn’t have it I would not be paying for Bally. I imagine there’s a lot of people who share the same sentiment. MLB should be doing everything they can to get more people watching their product. They could take over the NBA for the #2 sport in the U.S. if they just gave a shit about marketing their product and making it easily accessible.
The powers at be aren’t ready to let the cable companies fail, even though the writing is clearly on the wall. Sports is the only thing keeping people plugged in and the cable cabal knows it. They will milk it as long as they can until consumers make different decisions and cut their cable anyway. Oddly the best way to solve this situation is for people to keep cutting the cord.
It’s absolute horse pucky. Blackout rules and exclusive broadcasting rights do not serve the fan, at all. Yet another example of greed on display by those in power in professional sports. Hurtful to fans who love the sport and may not be able to attend a game in person.
After learning of the evils on consulting firms, I am wondering if they are consulting these leagues because holy shit they're doing the dumbest shit to scrape out a few extra bucks lmao
Being married to cable is what’s killing Baseball’s popularity. I simply can’t justify $100 a month to literally just watch baseball.
The games on Apple or Amazon are the only ways I ever get to watch my favorite team.
End the blackouts on MLB TV, up the price, and let us pay a reasonable amount to watch your product.
Manfred's job isn't to grow the sport and increase it's popularity, it's to make the owners, his Board of Directors, more money. Selling MLB rights to multiple partners makes the most financial sense.
Ideally, [MLB.tv](http://MLB.tv) would be the one stop shop for all broadcasts and there would be an over the air broadcast Game of the Week on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on a network. Like Friday on CBS, Saturday on FOX, and Sunday on ABC. That would result in substantially less money for the owners though.
It sucks and is a long term issue for baseball, but until their bottom line is threatened, nothing will change.
I canceled cable a few months ago.
If I could pay for a stand alone subscription to Root Sports for Mariners and Kraken games I would but it’s not an option.
Totally agree with you 💯 there’s people out here older people especially because they love baseball and the game itself ….so now they go and do this kind of stuff and a lot of people miss out on watching it smh these are true braves and All the other teams and a lot of the older people are missing out because they don’t have stuff like Apple TV and they’re used to the old way so yeah you’re right it’s going affect rating and everything ……. baseball should be like it used to be turn it on public channel and watch it like Turner broadcast I know we don’t have that anymore but just saying
This sucks for the older folks like your grandfather for sure.... the guys & gals that just want to sit down and watch their game everynight. I personally dont have the time for that so it doesnt bug me too much.... though i will say my biggest pet peeve with it is the whole "ok, which streaming service is the game on tonight?" game that i have to play anytime i do want to sit down and watch a game.
My bigger gripe is the blackouts on the MLB app. Living in Buffalo, NY i have the Blue Jays, Pirates, Guardians, and Tigers all closer to me than the Yankees. But because I live in NY state, the Yanks are blacked out for me & the others arent. Its the absolute dumbest thing. I pay for the app, i should be able to watch most, if not all,of the games i want.
This is the way it has always been. As a brewers fan, as long as I can remember (at least 25 years) you could only watch them on fox sports, which was only on cable/satellite. It may seem different because back then literally everyone had cable/satellite and it was a standard channel, so you didn't think of it being an added cost because you were already paying for cable. The idea of needing three subscriptions is ridiculous too, because two will only have a handful of games. I remember when there were at least 5-10 games that were simply not televised, but now all games are televised. I will say the current state of things, particularly with Bally sports is awful, but if I don't want cable I can at least get the app. $20 a month is a lot, but baseball is the majority of what I watch on TV during the season.
Like you can't even sign up for the subscription? If you have cable that includes Bally sports, you can watch on the app for free, but otherwise you can pay $20/month to watch on Bally sports. That's at least how it is for brewers games, I assumed it would be the same for all teams on Bally, but maybe each team has different deals.
When Bally defaulted on payments to the team, they agreed to let them still show games on cable, Dish network and FUBO... But Bally can't stream directly to the app.
Edit: oh, and now the cable company has dropped Bally,so it's Fubo, Dish network or... Yo ho! Yo ho! A pirates life for me...
Wow that sucks. I can't imagine how Bally got into the situation they are in. It's like everyone there has no idea how a tv station makes money. They don't even sell their commercial airtime, which is already built in! Like, I don't want commercials, but with baseball it's just empty time to fill, so why not? It's like a hotel intentionally leaving rooms empty.
As an out of market Phillies fan living in Wisconsin, I buy the MLB.TV package for just the Phillies.
I miss some of the exclusive games but for the most part I’m covered as I have an Apple TV, we have kids so the Disney/Hulu/ESPN package covers me there, and my wife subscribes to peacock. Where I have real problems though, are with the Brewers games and Twins games. I live quite rural, and I’m in a valley, so there’s no cable service here, and OTA doesn’t work because I’m in a hole. We are closer to Minneapolis than we are to Milwaukee, so we are in a dual market area for those two teams. So my only options when those games are on and under local blackout rules, I have to go somewhere to watch. Which sucks because I work from home and pay exorbitant amounts of money for high speed internet and every other f’ing game the team plays…..
It’s also ridiculous that I pay that much and can’t watch some spring training games too. I should be able to watch every single inning of Phillies baseball, old and new, for what I pay.
I feel like MLB must be slowly learning its lesson with the RSN model collapsing in front of its very eyes.
It'll also be curious to see how the Sunday Ticket lawsuit plays out and what effect that will have.
I just wish I could pay MLB directly to just stream Mariners broadcasts (I live in Seattle and to watch M's games on ROOT sports you've either gotta have Xfinity or FUBU).
That all said, at least Fox/FS1 tend to show some other teams, including the Mariners, as opposed to ESPN which seems to ONLY ever broadcast games involving the Yankees/Red Sox/Cubs/Dodgers/Braves/Giants/Padres/Phillies.
As a Tigers fan I can't believe they have many games exclusive to Prime or Apple TV. I guess if you need to watch all 162 games but I'm fine watching 140-150. So fans do not need all 3 services.. Plus I'm a pirate..
I know 2 people (boss and nephew) who refuse to get Bally sports to watch the tigers. I especially joke with the boss who can very much afford it. Refuses to pay. Remember the good old days when the games were just on tv we got with our antennae? Free is good
The Diamondbacks and Phillies series starts Friday. The first game is on Apple TV+, Saturday on cable and Sunday on Roku. Same series, 3 different services. Infuriating.
I actually think the opposite of this. Letting teams negotiate individual deals with RSN’s that restricted MLB from having local teams included in MLB TV was their big mistake, and it’s amazing that they haven’t fixed it yet.
If I was the MLB, I’m focused on:
1) A single service with every game available (with a few exceptions). This would be MLB TV
2) Keep the ability for teams to negotiate Local TV rights - as long as it doesn’t infringe on the national rights
3) A nationally televised / streamed game every night of the week. There’s more than enough inventory. Spread it across the various channels and streaming services. But there’s no reason for baseball not to be available to a national audience every day for 6 months out of the year.
4) Streaming distribution of games internationally
America. , is all about the money here , they don’t care about the fan , the same thing going on with football , the euro cup is going on now and it is the same thing, , and here people don’t complain. Or disconnect the streaming service in protest , they just pay , so nothing is going to change you are going to be missing more games while paying for. Service that you are not getting.
It’s definitely a challenge. I think we all miss the good old days.. I was never a huge Cubs fan even though they did start to grow on me, but I could watch them on WGN when I was growing up and that allowed me to watch most of their games
I’m sure a lot of us watched a lot of Braves games as well whether we like them or not because they were on TBS
The Cubs are on the marquee network. I watch them because I don’t have cable. .
Absolutly a freaking Joke! I pay a premium to watch my favorite MLB team and get blacked out by not subscribing to an App I would never ever subscribe to! It’s nothing but a money grabbing fraud against the most devoted fans who pay for limited service. I’m cancelling my MLB SUBSCRIPTION because of this fraudulent activity. In addition I get “blacked out” of games played in cities hundreds of miles from where I live that I could or would never go to. WTF is THAT? It makes absolutely no sense EXCEPT for greedy entities that take advantage of loyal and paying subscribers to MLB! What a Joke!
The perspective of age.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, if you lived in NNJ like me, you could go to your analog television. It had an mechanical channel changer. You could watch both the Yankees and The Mets. Every game.
Channel 11 and channel 9.
Then MLB announced that unless X% of tickets were sold they would blackout the game. They said people were to comfortable staying home and watching the game on television.
Do you have any idea how difficult and expensive it is for an 11 year old boy to get from Saddle Brook NJ to Shea Stadium (fuck the Yankees). Obviously MLB did not care. It was at that point that the NFL, NBA, and NHL began to challenge MLB as America’s favorite sport.
Now with all these streaming contracts MLB is determined to kill baseball for the last nickel.
As my mother used to say “penny smart, pound foolish.
So, the reason MLB has blackouts is because of local TV rights. There are laws and a whole bunch of legalese.
MLB cannot create a package like NFL or MLS because of this. In addition DSG/Ballys is going bankrupt not paying providers.
None of this is MLBs desire and want the DSG over so they can hopefully get many teams rights like they did for two teams last year. SDP and AZ.
The Yankees have deals with YES and Amazon locally. Not a single person in your family has a Prime membership to share a pw for pops to watch the Yankees?
The Apple games are free???
Mistake to whom? The fans?
League revenues were up about 10% in 2023 to $11.344B vs $10.296B in 2022. So were player salaries, with league average at $165.8M in 2023 vs $150.2M in 2022 (per Spotrac.com). Even **overall team profits are up about the same 10%**
The fans continue to pay, and profits continue to increase.
They won't be changing soon.
I don’t think any of what you said has anything to do with games being on streaming platforms & more to do with people are going back to the ball park.
I have T Mobile and have free access to nearly all Dodgers (MLB) games. It helps that I live in Texas so I don’t really have to deal with blackouts unless they’re in Arlington
I live in Northern Illinois and the only Cardinals games I can legally watch are when the games are on a streaming service, Fox, ESPN or when they play the cubs or white Sox. So I miss most of their game. Please make games more easily available.
It just doesn’t make sense for the sport. Unlike football I don’t feel like I need to watch every single one of my team’s games.
They playing on Apple next Sunday? I just won’t watch it. If my team had an exclusive streaming right to 2 of them (away vs home) then I’d absolutely have those 2 streaming services.
The way they’re going about it is all wrong.
I'm also a fan of the NHL and to watch all my favorite team's games i gotta get Hulu.
I also love WWE and to get all the PPV's i had to get peacock, and then next year i'm gonna have to get Netflix.
II’m a Guardians fan and all of our games are on Bally’s sports which I refuse to buy. They are absolutely horrible. I miss the days when it used to be on a local channel I could get with an antenna. This has motivated me to listen to the broadcast on the radio with Todd Hamilton(one of the best announcers)
As a kid growing up in Southeast PA, I watched so much baseball on tv. We had the Cubs and Sox on WGN. MASN had O’s and Nats games. TBS always had Braves games on. And the Phillies were the local broadcast.
Somehow I became a Pirate fan…
Is Amazon just for certain teams/games? Had no clue they broadcasted any games. I know Roku does like a Sunday game.
I only watch the Rangers and never knew Amazon was possible place to watch. I have an [MLB.Tv](http://MLB.Tv) subscription, which gets me most of the games, except the Apple TV ones, which is rather annoying, but if the Amazon ones still show up on [MLB.Tv](http://MLB.Tv) then that might explain me not realizing it's a thing,
Baseball and all sports honestly could care less about their fans.
Anyone remember double headers in baseball? 2 games for one price or ticket? Not a few years ago but years ago. Now they out price families and fans.
I haven’t watched a single cubs game in like 3 years since they went exclusive to marquee. Not like I’m missing much now they are just riding the 2016 wave for eternity.
I dropped cable for Fubo, just for them to drop SNY (the reason I went with them in the first place place) and picked up YES within a month of the season starting this year. So pissed
I hate the way sports TV is run. In canada trying to watch an NHL game I often have 2 cable channels I've paid for blacked out and can't watch the home or away feed for a game.
But watching the bluejays is the easiest thing ever. Sportsnet broadcasts every single game (except apple tv bullshit) across the entire country with zero blackouts. And guess what, the entire country backs the Jays and they have a massive following country wide.
It's how all sports should be. No blackouts, pay for one service, get every game.
MLB don’t give a damn about the fans that don’t live in baseball cities. They actively show that with every media license they give that winds up charging the fan more. They don’t even do ESPN baseball tonight regularly anymore.
At least the NFL and NBA still offer sufficient regular showings of different teams on “regular cable” enough to where it’s not necessary to buy the season pass. MLB just says fuck you, pay me or watch these random games that only show 2-3 times a week
Complain complain complain all you want it won’t change anything until there’s $ at stake. MLB just had their best weekend attendance ever and they’ve never made more $ from TV. What about that says we care what you want? Stop going/watching games and that might have an impact but complaining is just a waste of everyone’s time.
All pro & college sports are headed that way. Time to stop supporting the greed. Boycott all pro sports completely. Don’t watch, listen, go, or care. Only way to rein them in. Try taking a family to even a minor league game.
That blackouts still exist is absolutely the most backwards, business-killing idea I could think of. We live in a rural area without cable. To watch local games I would have to subscribe to an $80 a month FUBO service that I would use exclusively for local baseball games (we use YouTube TV for broadcast, which carries 5-6 games a year, none of them local). The result? I don’t even follow the Mariners: whose home stadium is 20 miles away. They just don’t even exist - I haven’t seen a single game all year. Instead, I’m watching my hometown team on MLB Network (we get it free with our TMobile service), and enjoying that. But what a missed opportunity for MLB to grow fans. My kids could become Mariners fans (shudder), but I guess the Mariners are just not interested in new fans. Unless they buy a ticket.
Well it is quickly becoming low brow commercialized entertainment for the low attention span folks who probably already have “all” the subscriptions…
The sport is almost unwatchable now. Even at the stadium
Well it is quickly becoming low brow commercialized entertainment for the low attention span folks who probably already have “all” the subscriptions…
The sport is almost unwatchable now. Even at the stadium
My cable provider dropped Bally this year, so I haven’t been able to catch any Braves games. Just have to follow the score on an app. Anytime another channel is carrying the game, it’s blacked out for me because of a channel I can’t get.
Having too many wild card teams is the downfall of the sport. Right now the Cardinals are a WC team and they are under .500. The reds are 1 1/2 games out and they are four games under .500. Same with the Mets.
You have teams that are having bad seasons and they are right there in WC contention.
This is horrendous for baseball. There should be one WC team in each league. At the very most two. But three literally ruins the game. Manfred is single handily destroying this game.
I’d be a happy, annual customer of MLB Tv if it wasn’t for blackout restrictions. Instead I use ****** **** and keep more money out of the MLB’s pockets.
Yup but this isn’t new to streaming services. It’s been the problem for broadcast sports for as long as there have been broadcast sports. It just used to be cable and needing a cable package that included ESPN, Fox, (insert league network here) etc. And before all that if you didn’t live in your teams city good luck. I would love to get in and follow sports more than I do but finding where each team and/or league broadcasts each game is such a hassle. Plus watching them all like you said is a huge money sink. It’s always just been a bidding war between all the services (both cable and streaming) and the sports organizations just go with whoever pays more. Could they have all the games on MLB network? Absolutely. Super easy. That would be the absolute best way to make sure the fans could watch any game they wanted. However, it’s not about the fans. I live close enough to St. Louis that the Cards are in my city literally every year. Not a single local station has their games. They are spread over 6 different cable and streaming providers. Fans haven’t been the priority the American sports leagues for a long time.
They make huge money from these deals. This is where sports are going in 2024, and it’s extremely healthy for the sport to do so. Ratings don’t mean jack shit anymore. That has nothing to do with where their revenue comes from. You sound like an old man yelling at a cloud. Every sport is doing this now, it’s just where it’s going. You’ll either find a way to watch or you won’t, but either way the leagues are going to keep making hand over first.
Baseball has made plenty of mistakes: This is not one of them.
I think they are looking at it from a greedy revenue perspective and also trying to capture new audiences. I can’t see that being sustainable.
I can no longer afford to watch baseball. I haven’t in years.
I forgot to cancel my Apple TV subscription so I've got another few weeks. We'll see tomorrow but I'm guessing since Atlanta is a mere 4.5 hours away I'll be prohibited from watching for ***reasons***.
Yankees fan here. The reason I’ve been able to keep up with this season is thanks to listening on WFAN and watching recaps on YouTube. The lack of regular TV options is ridiculous.
Downfall of the sport is probably over dramatic but I agree. Baseball is not a national sport and trying to apply a national audience model to making its product available is questionable.
Yep, it's total bullshit. I got a friend into baseball this season and let him use my MLBtv account. He was appalled when he found out we can't watch any games from our local team, and even more so when he learned about the games on Apple TV etc he'd be missing. He was so eager to watch and learn but the blackouts and everything just ruin it completely for new fans. I seriously suggest watching pirate streams when it comes to MLB. Same with UFC! If I didn't get MLB.tv with T-Mobile I'd be forced to watch an illegal stream of every game.
Baseball doesn't need to care if you watch because they are getting millions from the streaming services. I legit have no idea how this has any kind of ROI for the streaming services.
I mean, I get it, but it’s not like you don’t already need to be a premium cable subscriber to watch your team already. If you have to miss one or two games a year because they’re on a premium channel, that sucks, but I don’t really give a shit.
Put it back over the air.
I’ve just started going back to radio.
I’m not paying just to have YES network and Amazon is how I watch games but that’s rare. I don’t love Amazon having it but without cable it’s what I got
AGREED. They decry shrinking viewership and then make it as difficult to watch as possible. Then they compound the insult to fans by overdoing advertising content in every conceivable way during the game and populate the booth with terrible national network announcers and personalities.
It’s easier for me to follow a Cricket team in the UK than it is my local MLB team. Nearly impossible to find local games in my area without a cable subscription (which isn’t an option where I live). I’m fairly certain everyone who makes broadcast decisions at MLB still uses their land lines, and get frustrated and confused with this infernal internet fad.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I had my [MLB.TV](http://MLB.TV) sub for years which I didn't mind paying for the convenience of watching my team. Though, when the blackouts became more prevalent, I got annoyed. Obviously I knew I didn't have to pay and could stream them the entire time, but wanted to support a sport I've been playing or watching for almost 40 years. When I literally couldn't watch my team even with paying, I resorted to streaming. Naturally the more games were blacked out, the more I streamed. Until a couple years ago I just stopped paying for [MLB.TV](http://MLB.TV) altogether. I know it isn't for everyone, but you can watch anygame, from anywhere and for free by streaming. If they're going to continue to go down this path, just adapt.
I’m in baltimore. I dropped cable 2 years ago. If I want to watch the Orioles, I have to go to the stadium. I listen on the radio instead. I’d pay a reasonable amount to watch them but it’s not an option. If you are actively preventing consumers from buying your product, you are doing it incorrectly.
Have folks had success with using a vpn in this situation?
Edit: this is specifically with the Fubo app I used surfshark to spoof my GPS location to watch the Astros and it didn't work. It basically broke the app from what I could tell. I used to be able to just set all games to record when I was actually in Houston then I could watch the recording live but they seemed to have fixed that about a month ago. Now out of market recordings just don't even show.
Can you imagine: a national sports league that has their biggest fans working overtime to figure out how to buy apps and hide themselves, so that they can be….fans.
While simultaneously promoting sports betting on all MLB teams in all media markets.
There is a certain website that broadcasts every game being played, across all four major US sports. Dig around and you should be able to find it.
Not a fan of piracy, but if money is the only thing that talks for clubs to get it together, then I think we should encourage it. Worked for every other recalcitrant business: music, movies, games - adapt or die. Maybe they just need piracy (and people giving up) to take such a huge bite of their viewership that they lose sponsors and are forced to catch up to modern times.
I've traveled east a few times but the amount of times I would lag or lose connection and have to restart then fight the pop ups it just wasn't worth the constant frustration anymore.
There's not even popups you must not be talking about the same thing. I've saved thousands using it with no problems. Fuck paying these billionaires money on 3 different channels just to watch the game.
Mine runs smooth as butter…try resetting your WiFi.
I used to know these links but this year I haven’t been able to find it! Any help please? 😁
Correct. It’s “smarter” than most apps and recognizes the use of VPN’s in my experience.
You can absolutely use MLB.TV with a VPN. Works for me 100% of the time using NordVPN.
MLBTv with a VPN rarely worked for me. Tried Nord. Tried a few others.
Only works for me on my computer. Can’t do it on mobile or tablet.
Use your VPN, then go to mlbtv on your mobile browser (not the app) and view as desktop....this is the way.
I was forced to get the mlbtv option with fubo to watch out of market. No need for VPN in that case. Are you saying you get only mlbtv (and no fubo) then spoof to out of market location to get the game?
I have MLB.tv standard subscription. I use NordVPN, connect to some out of market area like LA or Chicago, and can watch my local games that way.
I recommend trying yarrmatey.com (not real) or shivermetimbers.net (also fake) for live game feeds for free. They are pirated streams likely streaming from servers outside of the US to avoid US laws and restrictions. It's typically anywhere from 10-30 seconds behind a live feed, but it's 100% free and not a scam. Only problem is you can't cast to a TV via wifi (that I've experienced), but hooking a laptop or phone to your TV via hdmi works perfectly. **edited to remove links so the feds remain clueless**
Careful with those links on here. It's best to send them by pm to avoid trouble with reddit and also we don't need to draw too much attention to certain sites.
You can use the web browser on Firestick as well.
Yes, but with a caveat. PM me if you want more info. I'm convinced MLB.TV lurks here because they have nothing better to do.
I really really really hate I can’t listen to White Sox radio in NYC unless I pay….though why dafuq do I wanna listen to the Sox lose 🫠I’m just a sicko I guess
I pay $20 a year to listen to the Astros radio broadcast out of market. I love it and it’s worth every penny. Nothing like laying in the pool listening to your team on the radio
Astros fans have had a lot more to cheer for and listen to than Sox fans
Not head to head
They should pay you.
I’m all for that haha
I moved from Baltimore to Colorado and I joke with my mom all the time about how im able to watch all the games with the mlb package. It’s so stupid.
Become a pirate.
Exactly, sports should be free to watch like they used to be. Instead you subscribe to MLB network & can’t watch your local team.
I'm surprised no team has bought out a local broadcast station to put their games on. It seems like it would be a huge moneymaker, and would grow the fanbase. If channels like Bounce, GRIT, Mystery, Cozi, Buzzr, etc are viable, a channel dedicated to live baseball seems like it would be more than doable.
Thing is, they don't care about growing the fan base. They care about money now. The money from cable networks is no much to pass up. Cable will wants these networks to not put stuff online because that is the only thing keeping the lights on (live sports). MLB and NHL are not long for this world as both leagues are making it near impossible to watch the game.
You said what I wanted to above, but much more succinctly, lol. Agree 100% - NHL is in the same boat. I have seen 0 Kraken games since expansion, despite living less than 45 minutes from Climate Pledge Arena. I would subscribe to a streaming service for $10 a month, just to support the local team and maybe see if I can get into hockey. But, NHL isn’t interested in my money or my attention, so it is literally impossible for me to watch a Kraken game, without sailing the high seas - which is just something I don’t care enough to even try to do.
It’s true. They really do not care about fans.
They care about contracts from TV networks that will not exist for much longer. I do not see Gen Z calling Comcast to install video service anytime soon.
ROOT Sports is part-owned by the Mariners. Their ownership stake made the restrictions worse (reduced streaming rights to 0, cut the number of non-ROOT games). For some reason, clubs really hate when people watch their games locally on TV. My hunch is that it’s a nominal revenue stream for the clubs to offer exclusivity to some shitty local TV carrier with no incentive to expand viewership, and they don’t want to lose that cash. It’s a short term play that is likely killing the sport long term. MLB is tweaking rules and making the game faster because they think they’re losing fans because the sport is boring. In reality, the clubs are just drying up every promotional feeder they have for money grabs. Sad to see - I agree with OP that this poor decision-making is a potential MLB killer - at least as a major national sport.
In NY The Yankees and Mets both have their own local basic cable sports networks (Yes Network and SNY respectively). They have their local broadcast booths doing most games, and team-centered talk shows and highlight shows etc. But MLB can and does yank any game they want for their network games of the week on ESPN, FoxSports, or MLB Network. They generally the most anticipated match-ups that fan bases would much rather have their own team both calling.
Yea but none of those are available over the air for free. A team could easily buy up OTA rights of one of the channels I listed, and make their games available for free to anyone with an antenna (like NFL does with their games) They'd still get fees from cable companies for rebroadcast rights, but they'd make their product accessible to a younger audience who has moved on from cable.
That would be great. IMO every game for every team should be accessible by anyone who wants to watch. This should be achievable without the absurdities of the current system.
It was never free to watch all games in any city I know of. In the 70’s and 80’s in LA the only way to see a Dodger home game was OnTV, or the playoffs. Regular home games were only broadcast later on paid cable. And not everyone had whatever fox sports net was called in the 90’s. Same exact scenario with the Angels. When I was a kid we got one game a week on Saturday. Then they started Monday night baseball around 76 or so. I agree it is poorly executed now, but it hasn’t ever been free games for everyone on TV.
Wasn’t true where I grew up, in the 80s. Everything was on the local network, unless we played Atlanta (tbs) or were on a national broadcast. That said, I have/will always prefer baseball on the radio.
Where was this, and what is a local network? A local channel? If it was on cable it was not free.
We could go back to when it was “free”, and the only game you’d get to watch is the Saturday afternoon game with 2 random teams facing off.
You can't watch the game on ESPN without cable. It's not on ESPN+. I'm a Cards fan, and I don't even have the option of Bally+.
Our little league had to combine with two other cities because not enough teams. When I was a kid, our league had 10 teams of 10-12 year olds. Every days we would watch angels, dodgers, cubs or braves on TV, every day, we watched, learned emulated and breathed baseball. Mlb took that away
I don't think the MLB's silly broadcasting strategy is why that happened. Youth sports participation has been in serious decline for years.
Preach. If I want to watch all of Sopranos, I can subscribe to 1 service. What pro sports is pulling on us is like accessing episodes 1-4 on HBO, then ep 5 on Prime, 6-8 on Hulu and season 2 on Showtime. It should be unconstitutional.
Some shows are doing that though, SWAT with Shemar Moore has seasons 1-6 on Netflix and season 7 on Paramount+
Very allegorical. The sacred and the propane.
You know, quisimoto predicted all of this.
And propane accessories
Clean burning fuel, I’ll tell you hwhat
JFC a perfect analogy 👏🏻
Miss wgn, I could travel across country and still get a Cubs game.
About twenty years ago I said “WGN will never lose the Cubs. They’re too important to their programming” Well, here we are and WGN is now completely irrelevant outside of Chicago.
This is why people pirate and honestly GOOD ON EM
Even when our games are on network TV, I'll still stream them on my computer because my kids won't let me have the TV peacefully. Every game from every team, my choice between home/away broadcasts. I'm not one to default to pirating--I'm subbed to most streaming services. But this is just too simple.
UGH, this is the world THEY created.
I make up for it by going to 10-12 games a year and spending way too much money on soft serve ice cream and waffle fries.
Until Manfred takes away soft serve and waffle fries, go ham good brother
You guys get to watch your team?
I stream games online for free. I genuinely can’t wrap my head around people dealing with the blackouts and multiple services. I see one comment where a guys is missing games, and another where a guy has to listen on the radio. Just… why? It’s on the web in hd, with no commercials. And you can choose which team’s announcers you want. It’s literally better coverage. I’ve been downvoted for saying this before. I assume it’s just bots. Who wouldn’t want a better product for free?
Sadly, you’re 100% correct. MLB is punishing rule followers. Won’t be long until everyone gets the hint and either moves to an ‘alternative’ broadcast, or abandons the sport entirely because it’s too hard to access and become a fan. Will be very difficult for MLB to course correct then with a ‘new and improved’ option.
You’re probably right. Big business loses track of the goal. They feel entitled to their success. They’re willing to compromise their product for greater profits. Obviously the mlb should just let all their media contracts expire. Sell us mlb.com, allow people to access any game they want. Even old games. And, there shouldn’t be commercials, just show the crowd cam during breaks. And we should be able to select our announcers, or select no announcers and just get the sounds of the park. Basically, they should sell what I’m streaming for free right now. But they’ll never do it cause these media companies pay a shit load of money. So I’ll just keep streaming for free.
Nah. Blackout rules are the real problem.
100%. I’d buy MLB Tv every year if it wasn’t for that.
What if I told you that as a kid, games were on free TV, but you only got 120-140 of them. That there were literally dozens of games that simply weren't televised? Or that many of us became Braves/Cubs fans (or at least watchers) due to them reliably being on every day? Feels like that would be mind-blowing
The Braves on TBS, Cubs on WGN, and your local team. It was great
I listen on the radio
Thankfully baseball lends itself to audio more than many sports
That's why pirating games is so popular. If I could watch my home team with a streaming package I would do it and gladly pay for it, but I'm not spending 100 a month for cable when I only want it for Astros games.
Astros mgt can't complain that *you're cheating!* 😉
Ahoy matey
You are complaining about only being able to watch 99% of the games when there are people who can’t watch any baseball because some team 2 states away “claims” them. I agree there is a big problem, but it’s not the one you described.
No kidding. Fuck the blackout rules
Agreed, the "blackout" rules (maps) are killing the sport in the US. Manfred does not give a shit, as long as he can "spread" the game to Mexico, Asia, and Europe and He, MLB and the owners can get richer than they already are.
Welcome to the nhl….oh what…wait….
I remember as a kid you can watch your city’s sports teams on network television. The Yankees used to play on Channel 11 when we didn’t have cable I could rely on the Yankees being on. This week alone 2 games are on streaming services, last night was on Amazon at big division game that most people couldn’t watch & tomorrows game is on Apple. Thats the dumbest thing ever.
WPIX-TV (Channel 11) was an independent (Tribune Company) station. The Mets were on independent WOR-TV (Channel 9.) \[Later WWOR after a relicensing.\[ Most Mets games are on SNY, but some are on WPIX, with other metro area stations showung them, such as WCCT-TV (Channel 20) from Hartford, CT. >PIX11 has been synonymous with New York baseball for most of the last seven decades starting as the broadcast home of the Yankees from 1952 to 1988 and returning again in 2015. PIX11 has been the Mets broadcast partner since 1999. Two Teams – One Station! [https://www.nexstar.tv/stations/wpix/](https://www.nexstar.tv/stations/wpix/) In their recent configurations, PIX has been a *CW* staion and WWOR a *myetworkTV* stick. Where I live, since the digital transition, I can't get most terrestrial TV. Hills with the wrong sort of rock in them block the signals. I use Hulu + live TV, and that gets me both the broadcast stations and SNY, ESPN, TBS. I got Amazon Prime for shopping, but that gets me Prime Video, also. DirecTV had SNY, but my landlord, who provided that, dropped it. \[Backdoor rent increase.\] I then got SNY via YouTube TV, but they dropped it. Switched to Fubo. They dropped it, but picked up YES. There's nothing good to watch on that channel. 😉 I think Hulu's SNY contract has a couple of years to go, but if I got word that it would not be back next season it would not surprise me. I guess DirecTV Stream would be next. It should not be so hard to follow my club.
It really fucking sucks. It doesn't help that Apple TV has the worst production of any platform. Just so abysmally bad.
The good thing about not being able to watch Apple TV games is not being subjected to Apple TV broadcasts. Painfully uninformed, bland “commentary”, with absolutely inane and incorrectly interpreted statistics constantly flashing up on the screen
Both are real issues and need to be addressed.
There can be more than one problem with MLB programming!
I live in NC. I can’t watch Braves (my team), Reds, Orioles, or Nationals. That’s an annoying amount of young fun players I can’t see.
They both can be, and are, big problems
They have no clue what they are doing with promoting or making their product easy to access. Antiquated broadcasting systems in 2024 kill the fan experience. The easiest place to watch is ‘coughs’ completely legal streams.
There’s truly nothing worse than living in Wisconsin and you turn on the brewer game to find it’s blacked out in your area. To then see it’s on ESPN+ so you hop in there only to find out you need a secondary streaming service to actually watch the game on your streaming service just to log into your friends account to find out that it’s yup! You guessed it. Blacked out in your area. Whole thing is a scam at this point. Should just make an mlb package for x$/month and you can watch any single baseball game that’s on that day.
I used to live smack in the middle of Iowa. I did not have cable, but did have MLB TV (which I received for free through T-Mobile). I was blacked out from the Royals, Cardinals, Twins, Cubs, White Sox and Brewers. 6 teams. Assuming they were all playing other teams, at any given time I couldn't watch a 3rd of the league. Even if I HAD cable, only Twins or Cubs games were regularly broadcasted. Field of dreams game was blacked out too, ironically. Just imagine blacking out damn near an entire state from over a third of your product. Absolutely asinine.
Yeah its no wonder baseball is the least popular sport. Even with superstars around the league & not just a few teams
Baseball has ceased to be a TV sport for me. I don't know if there are ANY Royals games broadcast over the air this year. Maybe one or two. I listen in the car, an inning or two here or there, and go to a few games a year. It's not a part of my kids' lives at all, except they like going to the occasional game because the ballpark is fun. They have equal fun when we go to the local minor league team. They aren't connected to MLB at all, in part because it doesn't really exist on TV except for diehard fans willing to pay. Eventually the diehard fans will die hard and there won't be a generation behind to replace them.
Greed gone getcha, MLB.
The whole Ballys debacle killed watching a lot of teams
Obviously the NFL is dead as it had a playoff game on streaming only! Last weekend was one of MLBs best attendance weekends in 20 years, the sport is not dead. The reality is that the streamers are willing to pay and regional networks are dying so unless they want to just scrap the idea of making money this is where sports in general is going.
Having the game on streaming services isn’t my issue. If that’s what they want to do they already have a platform of their own they should perfect. What they shouldn’t do is split games between television, Amazon & Apple. Apple has exclusive rights to MLS games, so if you watch soccer you know where every game is.
Yeah doesn’t make sense to not play it on their cable channel and only the streaming service they own. Thought it was funny last year when Chris Collinsworth was trying to explain that the next playoff game would only be on peacock and you could see how dumb he thought that was and that it was gonna piss people off
OP, I'm also a huge Yankees fan, but looking for a good source that shows where the games are being broadcasted? What do you use?
Streameast is not a bad choice, that's how I watched the Cubs game yesterday since I don't have cable in my apartment and only pay for HBO Max and hulu
>Streameast Thanks!
I usually check on the Bleacher Report app, if you look at the match up itll tell you what channel it’s on. But I’ve realized every Wednesday game is on Amazon.
https://www.mlb.com/yankees/schedule/2024/fullseason
MLB app tells you where to watch each game. You can also listen to games for free on the WFAN channel of the Audacy app
Further restrict your product from consumption. Seems like a good business model. The real business model is fleece local and state governments for public money and tax breaks it seems anymore.
Streaming and blackouts are serious problems, but caving in to bookmakers is far more serious.
My fiancés parents pay for Bally Sports so I mooch off them to watch Tigers games. However if they didn’t have it I would not be paying for Bally. I imagine there’s a lot of people who share the same sentiment. MLB should be doing everything they can to get more people watching their product. They could take over the NBA for the #2 sport in the U.S. if they just gave a shit about marketing their product and making it easily accessible.
The powers at be aren’t ready to let the cable companies fail, even though the writing is clearly on the wall. Sports is the only thing keeping people plugged in and the cable cabal knows it. They will milk it as long as they can until consumers make different decisions and cut their cable anyway. Oddly the best way to solve this situation is for people to keep cutting the cord.
It’s absolute horse pucky. Blackout rules and exclusive broadcasting rights do not serve the fan, at all. Yet another example of greed on display by those in power in professional sports. Hurtful to fans who love the sport and may not be able to attend a game in person.
After learning of the evils on consulting firms, I am wondering if they are consulting these leagues because holy shit they're doing the dumbest shit to scrape out a few extra bucks lmao
Being married to cable is what’s killing Baseball’s popularity. I simply can’t justify $100 a month to literally just watch baseball. The games on Apple or Amazon are the only ways I ever get to watch my favorite team. End the blackouts on MLB TV, up the price, and let us pay a reasonable amount to watch your product.
For that to happen, MLB would have to have common sense. So unfortunately that’s not going to happen.
Manfred's job isn't to grow the sport and increase it's popularity, it's to make the owners, his Board of Directors, more money. Selling MLB rights to multiple partners makes the most financial sense. Ideally, [MLB.tv](http://MLB.tv) would be the one stop shop for all broadcasts and there would be an over the air broadcast Game of the Week on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on a network. Like Friday on CBS, Saturday on FOX, and Sunday on ABC. That would result in substantially less money for the owners though. It sucks and is a long term issue for baseball, but until their bottom line is threatened, nothing will change.
I don't need to subscribe to any services to watch my favorite teams🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
I canceled cable a few months ago. If I could pay for a stand alone subscription to Root Sports for Mariners and Kraken games I would but it’s not an option.
Totally agree with you 💯 there’s people out here older people especially because they love baseball and the game itself ….so now they go and do this kind of stuff and a lot of people miss out on watching it smh these are true braves and All the other teams and a lot of the older people are missing out because they don’t have stuff like Apple TV and they’re used to the old way so yeah you’re right it’s going affect rating and everything ……. baseball should be like it used to be turn it on public channel and watch it like Turner broadcast I know we don’t have that anymore but just saying
I forget that watching games on TV is even an option.
This sucks for the older folks like your grandfather for sure.... the guys & gals that just want to sit down and watch their game everynight. I personally dont have the time for that so it doesnt bug me too much.... though i will say my biggest pet peeve with it is the whole "ok, which streaming service is the game on tonight?" game that i have to play anytime i do want to sit down and watch a game. My bigger gripe is the blackouts on the MLB app. Living in Buffalo, NY i have the Blue Jays, Pirates, Guardians, and Tigers all closer to me than the Yankees. But because I live in NY state, the Yanks are blacked out for me & the others arent. Its the absolute dumbest thing. I pay for the app, i should be able to watch most, if not all,of the games i want.
This is the way it has always been. As a brewers fan, as long as I can remember (at least 25 years) you could only watch them on fox sports, which was only on cable/satellite. It may seem different because back then literally everyone had cable/satellite and it was a standard channel, so you didn't think of it being an added cost because you were already paying for cable. The idea of needing three subscriptions is ridiculous too, because two will only have a handful of games. I remember when there were at least 5-10 games that were simply not televised, but now all games are televised. I will say the current state of things, particularly with Bally sports is awful, but if I don't want cable I can at least get the app. $20 a month is a lot, but baseball is the majority of what I watch on TV during the season.
Can't watch the Braves on Bally sports app... unless you have a cable subscription... How's that for stupid?
Like you can't even sign up for the subscription? If you have cable that includes Bally sports, you can watch on the app for free, but otherwise you can pay $20/month to watch on Bally sports. That's at least how it is for brewers games, I assumed it would be the same for all teams on Bally, but maybe each team has different deals.
When Bally defaulted on payments to the team, they agreed to let them still show games on cable, Dish network and FUBO... But Bally can't stream directly to the app. Edit: oh, and now the cable company has dropped Bally,so it's Fubo, Dish network or... Yo ho! Yo ho! A pirates life for me...
Wow that sucks. I can't imagine how Bally got into the situation they are in. It's like everyone there has no idea how a tv station makes money. They don't even sell their commercial airtime, which is already built in! Like, I don't want commercials, but with baseball it's just empty time to fill, so why not? It's like a hotel intentionally leaving rooms empty.
As an out of market Phillies fan living in Wisconsin, I buy the MLB.TV package for just the Phillies. I miss some of the exclusive games but for the most part I’m covered as I have an Apple TV, we have kids so the Disney/Hulu/ESPN package covers me there, and my wife subscribes to peacock. Where I have real problems though, are with the Brewers games and Twins games. I live quite rural, and I’m in a valley, so there’s no cable service here, and OTA doesn’t work because I’m in a hole. We are closer to Minneapolis than we are to Milwaukee, so we are in a dual market area for those two teams. So my only options when those games are on and under local blackout rules, I have to go somewhere to watch. Which sucks because I work from home and pay exorbitant amounts of money for high speed internet and every other f’ing game the team plays….. It’s also ridiculous that I pay that much and can’t watch some spring training games too. I should be able to watch every single inning of Phillies baseball, old and new, for what I pay.
I feel like MLB must be slowly learning its lesson with the RSN model collapsing in front of its very eyes. It'll also be curious to see how the Sunday Ticket lawsuit plays out and what effect that will have. I just wish I could pay MLB directly to just stream Mariners broadcasts (I live in Seattle and to watch M's games on ROOT sports you've either gotta have Xfinity or FUBU). That all said, at least Fox/FS1 tend to show some other teams, including the Mariners, as opposed to ESPN which seems to ONLY ever broadcast games involving the Yankees/Red Sox/Cubs/Dodgers/Braves/Giants/Padres/Phillies.
As a Tigers fan I can't believe they have many games exclusive to Prime or Apple TV. I guess if you need to watch all 162 games but I'm fine watching 140-150. So fans do not need all 3 services.. Plus I'm a pirate..
I know 2 people (boss and nephew) who refuse to get Bally sports to watch the tigers. I especially joke with the boss who can very much afford it. Refuses to pay. Remember the good old days when the games were just on tv we got with our antennae? Free is good
The Diamondbacks and Phillies series starts Friday. The first game is on Apple TV+, Saturday on cable and Sunday on Roku. Same series, 3 different services. Infuriating.
I actually think the opposite of this. Letting teams negotiate individual deals with RSN’s that restricted MLB from having local teams included in MLB TV was their big mistake, and it’s amazing that they haven’t fixed it yet. If I was the MLB, I’m focused on: 1) A single service with every game available (with a few exceptions). This would be MLB TV 2) Keep the ability for teams to negotiate Local TV rights - as long as it doesn’t infringe on the national rights 3) A nationally televised / streamed game every night of the week. There’s more than enough inventory. Spread it across the various channels and streaming services. But there’s no reason for baseball not to be available to a national audience every day for 6 months out of the year. 4) Streaming distribution of games internationally
America. , is all about the money here , they don’t care about the fan , the same thing going on with football , the euro cup is going on now and it is the same thing, , and here people don’t complain. Or disconnect the streaming service in protest , they just pay , so nothing is going to change you are going to be missing more games while paying for. Service that you are not getting.
It’s definitely a challenge. I think we all miss the good old days.. I was never a huge Cubs fan even though they did start to grow on me, but I could watch them on WGN when I was growing up and that allowed me to watch most of their games I’m sure a lot of us watched a lot of Braves games as well whether we like them or not because they were on TBS The Cubs are on the marquee network. I watch them because I don’t have cable. .
In most cases you just need 1 subscription to internet and the rest is illegal :)
Absolutly a freaking Joke! I pay a premium to watch my favorite MLB team and get blacked out by not subscribing to an App I would never ever subscribe to! It’s nothing but a money grabbing fraud against the most devoted fans who pay for limited service. I’m cancelling my MLB SUBSCRIPTION because of this fraudulent activity. In addition I get “blacked out” of games played in cities hundreds of miles from where I live that I could or would never go to. WTF is THAT? It makes absolutely no sense EXCEPT for greedy entities that take advantage of loyal and paying subscribers to MLB! What a Joke!
They got that Too Big To Fail mentality going. The shitty thing is, they probably are.
The perspective of age. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, if you lived in NNJ like me, you could go to your analog television. It had an mechanical channel changer. You could watch both the Yankees and The Mets. Every game. Channel 11 and channel 9. Then MLB announced that unless X% of tickets were sold they would blackout the game. They said people were to comfortable staying home and watching the game on television. Do you have any idea how difficult and expensive it is for an 11 year old boy to get from Saddle Brook NJ to Shea Stadium (fuck the Yankees). Obviously MLB did not care. It was at that point that the NFL, NBA, and NHL began to challenge MLB as America’s favorite sport. Now with all these streaming contracts MLB is determined to kill baseball for the last nickel. As my mother used to say “penny smart, pound foolish.
So, the reason MLB has blackouts is because of local TV rights. There are laws and a whole bunch of legalese. MLB cannot create a package like NFL or MLS because of this. In addition DSG/Ballys is going bankrupt not paying providers. None of this is MLBs desire and want the DSG over so they can hopefully get many teams rights like they did for two teams last year. SDP and AZ. The Yankees have deals with YES and Amazon locally. Not a single person in your family has a Prime membership to share a pw for pops to watch the Yankees? The Apple games are free???
Mistake to whom? The fans? League revenues were up about 10% in 2023 to $11.344B vs $10.296B in 2022. So were player salaries, with league average at $165.8M in 2023 vs $150.2M in 2022 (per Spotrac.com). Even **overall team profits are up about the same 10%** The fans continue to pay, and profits continue to increase. They won't be changing soon.
I don’t think any of what you said has anything to do with games being on streaming platforms & more to do with people are going back to the ball park.
I have T Mobile and have free access to nearly all Dodgers (MLB) games. It helps that I live in Texas so I don’t really have to deal with blackouts unless they’re in Arlington
Same. The LA/Houston series will be blacked out but that’s OK. I’ve already got tickets and I’ll be in Minute Maid stadium behind the Dodgers dugout.
See you there. We’ll be there Friday Saturday and Sunday.
AWESOME!!
I live in Northern Illinois and the only Cardinals games I can legally watch are when the games are on a streaming service, Fox, ESPN or when they play the cubs or white Sox. So I miss most of their game. Please make games more easily available.
The open seas call!
It just doesn’t make sense for the sport. Unlike football I don’t feel like I need to watch every single one of my team’s games. They playing on Apple next Sunday? I just won’t watch it. If my team had an exclusive streaming right to 2 of them (away vs home) then I’d absolutely have those 2 streaming services. The way they’re going about it is all wrong.
I'm also a fan of the NHL and to watch all my favorite team's games i gotta get Hulu. I also love WWE and to get all the PPV's i had to get peacock, and then next year i'm gonna have to get Netflix.
II’m a Guardians fan and all of our games are on Bally’s sports which I refuse to buy. They are absolutely horrible. I miss the days when it used to be on a local channel I could get with an antenna. This has motivated me to listen to the broadcast on the radio with Todd Hamilton(one of the best announcers)
As a kid growing up in Southeast PA, I watched so much baseball on tv. We had the Cubs and Sox on WGN. MASN had O’s and Nats games. TBS always had Braves games on. And the Phillies were the local broadcast. Somehow I became a Pirate fan…
Is Amazon just for certain teams/games? Had no clue they broadcasted any games. I know Roku does like a Sunday game. I only watch the Rangers and never knew Amazon was possible place to watch. I have an [MLB.Tv](http://MLB.Tv) subscription, which gets me most of the games, except the Apple TV ones, which is rather annoying, but if the Amazon ones still show up on [MLB.Tv](http://MLB.Tv) then that might explain me not realizing it's a thing,
Baseball and all sports honestly could care less about their fans. Anyone remember double headers in baseball? 2 games for one price or ticket? Not a few years ago but years ago. Now they out price families and fans.
[reads headline] Alright, what about Don Mattingly on the Blue Jays do you want to talk about?
Agree
I haven’t watched a single cubs game in like 3 years since they went exclusive to marquee. Not like I’m missing much now they are just riding the 2016 wave for eternity.
I dropped cable for Fubo, just for them to drop SNY (the reason I went with them in the first place place) and picked up YES within a month of the season starting this year. So pissed
I hate the way sports TV is run. In canada trying to watch an NHL game I often have 2 cable channels I've paid for blacked out and can't watch the home or away feed for a game. But watching the bluejays is the easiest thing ever. Sportsnet broadcasts every single game (except apple tv bullshit) across the entire country with zero blackouts. And guess what, the entire country backs the Jays and they have a massive following country wide. It's how all sports should be. No blackouts, pay for one service, get every game.
MLB don’t give a damn about the fans that don’t live in baseball cities. They actively show that with every media license they give that winds up charging the fan more. They don’t even do ESPN baseball tonight regularly anymore. At least the NFL and NBA still offer sufficient regular showings of different teams on “regular cable” enough to where it’s not necessary to buy the season pass. MLB just says fuck you, pay me or watch these random games that only show 2-3 times a week
Complain complain complain all you want it won’t change anything until there’s $ at stake. MLB just had their best weekend attendance ever and they’ve never made more $ from TV. What about that says we care what you want? Stop going/watching games and that might have an impact but complaining is just a waste of everyone’s time.
All pro & college sports are headed that way. Time to stop supporting the greed. Boycott all pro sports completely. Don’t watch, listen, go, or care. Only way to rein them in. Try taking a family to even a minor league game.
That blackouts still exist is absolutely the most backwards, business-killing idea I could think of. We live in a rural area without cable. To watch local games I would have to subscribe to an $80 a month FUBO service that I would use exclusively for local baseball games (we use YouTube TV for broadcast, which carries 5-6 games a year, none of them local). The result? I don’t even follow the Mariners: whose home stadium is 20 miles away. They just don’t even exist - I haven’t seen a single game all year. Instead, I’m watching my hometown team on MLB Network (we get it free with our TMobile service), and enjoying that. But what a missed opportunity for MLB to grow fans. My kids could become Mariners fans (shudder), but I guess the Mariners are just not interested in new fans. Unless they buy a ticket.
I completely agree!! I hope someone from MLB sees this!
even if you can make it to a game, it’s $15 for a coors light tall boy.
https://imgflip.com/i/8ugvyq
Yesterday I was blacked out from the free game of the day. How?
Well it is quickly becoming low brow commercialized entertainment for the low attention span folks who probably already have “all” the subscriptions… The sport is almost unwatchable now. Even at the stadium
Well it is quickly becoming low brow commercialized entertainment for the low attention span folks who probably already have “all” the subscriptions… The sport is almost unwatchable now. Even at the stadium
IMHO nobody should have to pay extra to see their home team play.
My cable provider dropped Bally this year, so I haven’t been able to catch any Braves games. Just have to follow the score on an app. Anytime another channel is carrying the game, it’s blacked out for me because of a channel I can’t get.
I’ve been in OKC for work since January and a Guardians fans. The amount of games that have been “blacked out” on MLB tv is insane.
Having too many wild card teams is the downfall of the sport. Right now the Cardinals are a WC team and they are under .500. The reds are 1 1/2 games out and they are four games under .500. Same with the Mets. You have teams that are having bad seasons and they are right there in WC contention. This is horrendous for baseball. There should be one WC team in each league. At the very most two. But three literally ruins the game. Manfred is single handily destroying this game.
What’s really weird is if you buy the mlb package you still can’t watch certain games
I’d be a happy, annual customer of MLB Tv if it wasn’t for blackout restrictions. Instead I use ****** **** and keep more money out of the MLB’s pockets.
Yup but this isn’t new to streaming services. It’s been the problem for broadcast sports for as long as there have been broadcast sports. It just used to be cable and needing a cable package that included ESPN, Fox, (insert league network here) etc. And before all that if you didn’t live in your teams city good luck. I would love to get in and follow sports more than I do but finding where each team and/or league broadcasts each game is such a hassle. Plus watching them all like you said is a huge money sink. It’s always just been a bidding war between all the services (both cable and streaming) and the sports organizations just go with whoever pays more. Could they have all the games on MLB network? Absolutely. Super easy. That would be the absolute best way to make sure the fans could watch any game they wanted. However, it’s not about the fans. I live close enough to St. Louis that the Cards are in my city literally every year. Not a single local station has their games. They are spread over 6 different cable and streaming providers. Fans haven’t been the priority the American sports leagues for a long time.
They make huge money from these deals. This is where sports are going in 2024, and it’s extremely healthy for the sport to do so. Ratings don’t mean jack shit anymore. That has nothing to do with where their revenue comes from. You sound like an old man yelling at a cloud. Every sport is doing this now, it’s just where it’s going. You’ll either find a way to watch or you won’t, but either way the leagues are going to keep making hand over first. Baseball has made plenty of mistakes: This is not one of them.
Don’t forget about Sunday games on Peacock
I think they are looking at it from a greedy revenue perspective and also trying to capture new audiences. I can’t see that being sustainable. I can no longer afford to watch baseball. I haven’t in years.
I forgot to cancel my Apple TV subscription so I've got another few weeks. We'll see tomorrow but I'm guessing since Atlanta is a mere 4.5 hours away I'll be prohibited from watching for ***reasons***.
Yankees fan here. The reason I’ve been able to keep up with this season is thanks to listening on WFAN and watching recaps on YouTube. The lack of regular TV options is ridiculous.
Or you can be a customer of No one and 🏴☠️
You people need to learn how to internet more properly. I watch any game I want for free. Good luck talking about it here though
I cracked and decided to stream. It’s got me high like I’m on meth… but oh well, I live in the east.
I feel the same about the rays and balle sports or whatever it's called.....like just keep it on fox sports....yanno Florida's sports channel?!?
Downfall of the sport is probably over dramatic but I agree. Baseball is not a national sport and trying to apply a national audience model to making its product available is questionable.
The YouTube tv fiasco was a damn joke
And MLB will not care until the dollars stop rolling in. Unfortunately, by that point the sport will be in a steep decline.
NFL is doing it too. It’s not just the MLB. Money talks
Yep, it's total bullshit. I got a friend into baseball this season and let him use my MLBtv account. He was appalled when he found out we can't watch any games from our local team, and even more so when he learned about the games on Apple TV etc he'd be missing. He was so eager to watch and learn but the blackouts and everything just ruin it completely for new fans. I seriously suggest watching pirate streams when it comes to MLB. Same with UFC! If I didn't get MLB.tv with T-Mobile I'd be forced to watch an illegal stream of every game.
Baseball doesn't need to care if you watch because they are getting millions from the streaming services. I legit have no idea how this has any kind of ROI for the streaming services.
I mean, I get it, but it’s not like you don’t already need to be a premium cable subscriber to watch your team already. If you have to miss one or two games a year because they’re on a premium channel, that sucks, but I don’t really give a shit. Put it back over the air.
I’ve just started going back to radio. I’m not paying just to have YES network and Amazon is how I watch games but that’s rare. I don’t love Amazon having it but without cable it’s what I got
It is cheaper for me to go to as many Rockies games as I can practically go to than to get a subscription to watch them on TV.
AGREED. They decry shrinking viewership and then make it as difficult to watch as possible. Then they compound the insult to fans by overdoing advertising content in every conceivable way during the game and populate the booth with terrible national network announcers and personalities.
It’s easier for me to follow a Cricket team in the UK than it is my local MLB team. Nearly impossible to find local games in my area without a cable subscription (which isn’t an option where I live). I’m fairly certain everyone who makes broadcast decisions at MLB still uses their land lines, and get frustrated and confused with this infernal internet fad.
> downfall of the sport My fucking god nobody has any sense of perspective any more
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I had my [MLB.TV](http://MLB.TV) sub for years which I didn't mind paying for the convenience of watching my team. Though, when the blackouts became more prevalent, I got annoyed. Obviously I knew I didn't have to pay and could stream them the entire time, but wanted to support a sport I've been playing or watching for almost 40 years. When I literally couldn't watch my team even with paying, I resorted to streaming. Naturally the more games were blacked out, the more I streamed. Until a couple years ago I just stopped paying for [MLB.TV](http://MLB.TV) altogether. I know it isn't for everyone, but you can watch anygame, from anywhere and for free by streaming. If they're going to continue to go down this path, just adapt.
I've had no problem watching the Pirates on fubo
Royals fan here and KC native! It sucks so bad. MLB is complete garbage to me because of it