Baseball Narrowcasting

Baseball Narrowcasting Leave a comment

Come to find out, Major League Baseball is running the league with the intent of keeping every team very LOCAL.

That means that I can’t watch my Dodgers unless I subscribe to the ONE cable service that has them.

But it means there are a lot of people not watching their baseball teams. According to Yahoo, residents of Las Vegas can’t watch any of their regional teams:

… how can the league advocate for a system in which it prevents people in Las Vegas from seeing the Dodgers, Angels, Padres, Giants, A’s and Diamondbacks if they buy its Extra Innings or MLB.tv packages? There’s a new slogan: What happens in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland and Arizona doesn’t stay in Vegas.

The same is true for baseball fans in Arkansas, Buffalo, Oklahoma, Iowa, and other MLB-defined “limited areas” that don’t have a clear regional team.

The result? People don’t get to watch baseball unless they are in the right area, and subscribe to the right cable service.

So what’s a fan to do? I thought radio was my answer. Velda got me the portable radio out of her closet … which proved to have leaking batteries that ruined the battery contacts. She bought another radio (every house should have at least one). The result? Static on the LA station, and static on the local station, neither of which worked when I was listening in, or around, my home. Static does not work for me.

Michael then turned me on to MLB.com, which streams all of the games. You can listen to any stream, any game. Home or away. Every game. Plus, there are video highlights, box scores and other information about the game. It’s a subscription service, but the fee is really nominal.

Great, right?

Just don’t watch the stream on your screen. The video stream is up to 5 pitches and 2 batters away from the action that the audio delivers. Why can’t they get the audio to sync with the video stream? No idea.

But it doesn’t work, at all.

And the Dodgers’ video partner, Time Warner Cable, hasn’t made a deal with my Dish Network to carry my Dodgers.

So, there’s no good way to watch, and no streaming solution that really works.

It’s 2014, people. We have the technology. It’s baseball that has decided to take the money, and not deliver a watchable product to their fans.

And that’s not a good thing.

One more thing:

If you haven’t paid attention to the media coverage about Yasiel Puig, he’s a Cuban defector that joined the Dodgers last year. An truly interesting article in the Los Angeles magazine (link below) reports that he defected from Cuba with the help of a drug cartel. He was held hostage in Mexico. Now, he’s “free,” and owes his financier 20% of his earnings.

In Cuba, he was paid $17/month to play baseball. The Dodgers paid him $7 million a year … with the money from Time Warner Cable.

The cable company that won’t let me watch Puig play baseball unless I subscribe to their service.

Which I won’t do, as Time Warner doesn’t carry the networks for UCLA or Mizzou.

Sometimes, a sports fan just can’t win.