I have a CRAZY idea. Why not let a consumer who is ONLY interested in watching the Astros buy a package from the Astros and/or MLB for ALL Astros games and nothing else. Perhaps two tiers with and without commercials. In fact, why not just eliminate commercials and SHORTEN THE GAME TIMES without targeting the GAME ITSELF? That should please those who have the attention span of a gnat. You might even call the new Service ASTRO'S STREAMING. As current contracts are either modified or expire, eliminate direct to consumer streaming by teams (both home and away) from exclusive network deals.
MLB seems to be forward-looking on this front...we'll see what they end up doing. "Central revenue" is a game changer for the finances of all MLB teams, I'd love to see it. https://sports.yahoo.com/forget-the...f-the-regional-sports-networks-032239854.html “I hope we get to the point where, on the digital side, when you go to MLB.tv, you can buy whatever the heck you want,” Manfred said. “You can buy the out-of-market package. You can buy local games, you can buy two sets of local games, whatever you want. I mean, that is, to me, the definition of what is going to be a valuable digital offering going forward.” In other words, the à la carte streaming options consumers have become accustomed to. “There's a lot of work that will need to be done on this project,” Manfred said. “But I think as you move more national, by definition, you're gonna have more central revenue.” Of course, this is not how things were done in 1920, so you might not like it.
I've watched a dvr'd game on x3 speed a few times...I imagine that's what 1920's baseball looked like.
Access to games is different from changing the game itself. Of course there was no Free Agency at all and income wasn't distributed anywhere. And team weren't subsidized by their local taxing authority and stadiums were not built with tax free government bonds either. And the idea that you would pay $200/mo. plus to suffer through commercials was also considered absurd. The trade off was FREE baseball in exchange for insufferable commercials. And even that was far in the future. This was still an era of boxscores in the newspaper.
You're absolutely right. The game should never change. https://www.baseball-almanac.com/rulechng.shtml To wit: 1974 changed everything. The ball was permitted to be covered with cowhide because of the shortage of horses.
Doesn't the game itself require rule changes in the interest of length when its breaks are not arbitrary? Commercial breaks in baseball take advantage of the natural pauses in the sport: inning breaks and pitching changes. There are no timeouts like in basketball or football nor are there more arbitrary delays like in football (the dreaded touchdown, PAT, kickoff, offense takes over sequence). Players like Javy Baez have forced the adoption of the clock. It's insane how much ritual they've been allowed to perform before every single pitch. Their unnecessary behavior (and, yes, MLB's appetite for commercial money) have added so much time onto the sport.
It will be interesting to see how fast they are able to move on the league wide streaming service. At this point there are likely only 5-10 teams (maybe less) that benefit from an independent channel versus an all in one league service, but the teams that do benefit like the Yankees and Dodgers reaaaalllly benefit from it. When you remove the blue bloods from the pool I imagine the financial math gets significantly trickier independent versus collective.
If they're able to outright all the games/fees to a central streaming vendor (sorta how MLS did with apple), it will likely make more financial sense long-term for all teams, even the ones that own their network. There will also be significant demand from fans of those fan bases that are still having issues accessing the games... whereas every team has Ala-cart services or streamability at the tip of their fingers. I'm guessing there will be multiple tiers of packages offered. Current MLB.TV subscriptions where you can access all games, but no blackout rules. Team specific subscriptions where you only get your local team's games. Or the true on-demand/PPV service where you buy a game here/there. Luckily, MLB.TV was so far ahead of its time compared to all other pro leagues (I still can't believe it debut'd back in 2000, 2001ish), and they've already got the infra-structure and a streaming platform that is widely used. Now its just a matter of who's broadcasting the games vs. actually creating the ability to stream them.
Getting rid of the blackouts on MLB.TV would be dope. I already get it for free for being a TMobile customer and I'd finally be able to get rid of DirecTV Stream.
Just noticed that as well and it seems there is now a $14/mo Regional Sports Fee. I don't remember getting any notice that it was going to jump up so much. Wonder if they can keep that if the regional sports network goes away.
Oh, they will. Xfinity still carries the old FSSW, now Bally's, and I guarantee you nobody who originally signed up for that package cares that much about the Rangers in the Houston market... but those agreements and contracts were still valid even if the original teams (Rockets/Astros) are no longer showcased on that network.
