Here Comes The Waterfall: 15 MLB Teams To Lift Streaming Blackout For Fox Broadcasts
from the half-way dept
And away we go. Techdirt (myself specifically) has been talking for some time about the impending expansion of major sports streaming options as the cord-cutting trend has continued. It only makes sense: leagues and marketers will go where the audience is. The most recent trend started slowly with the FCC voting to end its blackout rule. That decision was important for streaming, because one of the dumbest ideas that migrated over from broadcast and cable television was the idea that local blackouts of broadcasts and streams were in any way a good idea. Even as the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB all have incrementally increased streaming options, those efforts have continued to be hampered by local blackout restrictions.
Well, Major League Baseball just took a giant step over the blackout line and is now effectively straddling it, announcing that local streaming will be available in fifteen markets in the 2016 season.
There is no specific timetable for a potential announcement of a deal between FOX and MLB. The two sides hope to complete the agreement around the end of this season, which would give the league and RSNs a full offseason to market the availability of the new local streams before Opening Day 2016. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, working with the league's president of business and media, Bob Bowman, has made in-market baseball streaming a key league priority, including personally participating in several negotiating sessions.Per the above, this specific deal is going to be done with MLB teams that have broadcasting deals with Fox. But don't think for a single moment that that's where it ends. Even if MLB can't get similar deals in place for the other half of teams in the league, which would fully free up the fantastic MLB.TV product for local streaming, any modicum of success that Fox has with this program will be immediately adopted by the other broadcasters. They really don't have a choice. Cord-cutting isn't going away and it's been professional and college sports that have long kept subscribers tethered. The trickle of streaming options in sports has been turning into more of a deluge, and the cable industry should be expecting some tough times ahead in the next, oh, say three to five years. Because if Manfred has this on his priority list for MLB, please believe that the commissioners in the other leagues have it on theirs as well.
And when sports streaming really gets going, it's the end of cable as we currently know it.
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Filed Under: baseball, blackouts, local, mlb, online, sports, streaming
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MLB is bad people
Take me out to the ball game
Take me out with the crowd
We help 501s harm Autistics
We don't care if that makes us seem dicks
Let me root, root, root for eugenics
If you don't abort, it's a shame
For when Autism Speaks strikes, you're out
At the old ball game
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So mlb.TV will get cheaper?
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Re: So mlb.TV will get cheaper?
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Re: Re: So mlb.TV will get cheaper?
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MLB.tv - er no
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Re: MLB.tv - er no
Sadly, you are right. MLB.tv will get the stream in exchange for giving FoxSportsGo the authentication of the users, so you have to have an active account (have to be a cable subscriber with access to the Fox network) in order to use this. So it helps exactly zero cable cutters or cable subscribers without access to the Fox network (if only everyone could be so lucky,) and probably not many others since they already have access to the video from cable.
The only hope for us cable cutters is a good decision in Garber v. Office of the Commissioner, but so far that has just been lawyers trying to score big on the litigation lottery and has not resulted in any changes (at least on the NHL side where they settled out of court and no changes were made.)
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And when exactly does sports streaming REALLY get going?
Four of the five major college conferences have TV rights deals in place well into the next decade, and the fifth has its own cable network and is expected to remain entrenched with the big cable networks.
Many teams that have deals in place with regional sports networks have them in place into the 2030s, and this deal doesn't necessarily mean those MLB teams that have deals with Fox will be available locally to MLB.tv subscribers, even for a nominal extra fee. Fox still wants to keep those baseball fans tied to the cable bundle to help pay for Fox News, Fox Sports 1 & 2, FX, FXX, Fox Business, and whatever other Fox channels people pay for without ever watching.
So tell me again when sports streaming REALLY gets going, because I'm not seeing it anytime soon.
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Re: And when exactly does sports streaming REALLY get going?
Which one would that be? The F.A., the Rugby Football League, the Rugby Football Union, the England and Wales Cricket Board, or the Elite Ice Hockey League? You're really going to have to clarify.
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Re: Re: And when exactly does sports streaming REALLY get going?
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Re: Re: Re: And when exactly does sports streaming REALLY get going?
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See here for more
In effect, this is barely sticking their toes in the water.
If getting a true no-strings-attached blackout-free streaming option (even at a higher cost) is the goal here, this probably hurts more then it helps. Sure, now there's a framework to get more teams on board, but with all the hoops a subscriber has to jump through to watch one of these games, this is not really a step in the right direction.
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Reality
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MLB still blacking out
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Re: MLB still blacking out
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