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Major League Baseball (MLB) has rules for exclusive broadcasting, called "blackout" rules, which bar certain areas from watching certain live games.[1] Most blackouts exist for two reasons: to set a given team's local broadcaster's exclusive broadcast territory, which induces cable systems in those areas to carry theregional sports networks that carry the games, as well as MLB's desire to drive stadium attendance.[2]
Almost every part of thecontiguous United States has at least one team blackout in place, with some having more. Every team has a home market blackout, while some teams have blackout areas that extent into several surrounding states. For example, theKansas City Royals are blacked out in the states ofMissouri (except in theSt. Louis metro area),Kansas,Nebraska,Oklahoma,Arkansas, andIowa.[3]
The state with the most regional blackouts isIowa, which is blacked out by six teams — theBrewers, theCardinals, theCubs, the Royals, theTwins, and theWhite Sox — even though all are a multi-hour drive away.[4]
Local broadcasts are not necessarily available in the whole blackout territory. For example,Bally Sports Wisconsin is unavailable in Iowa, so Brewers games are not broadcast anywhere in the state, neither on local channels nor on streaming.Las Vegas is another example of fans having restricted viewership, as theArizona Diamondbacks,Athletics,Los Angeles Angels,Los Angeles Dodgers,San Diego Padres, andSan Francisco Giants are all blacked out.
Due to the fact that they play in Canada, theToronto Blue Jays do not have any blackout territory in the United States. However, some MLB teams have blackouts that extend into Canada.
A new contract betweenESPN and Major League Baseball in 2012 virtually eliminated local blackouts involving the network's Monday and Wednesday night games, allowing ESPN coverage to co-exist with that of the local broadcasters in home markets.[5] The agreement took effect at the start of the2014 season and lasted until 2021.[6]
A contract extension between ESPN and MLB was struck in 2021, and was supposed to last until 2028 but ended in 2025 due to a clause allowing an opt out of the contract.[7]
In March 2022, MLB andApple signed a streaming deal worth $85 million annually. Through this streaming deal, Apple will broadcast a doubleheader every Friday, during the regular season on their streaming platformApple TV+.[8]
Due to the parent company of theBally Regional Sports network,Diamond Sports Group, applying for bankruptcy, there have been calls to end the blackout rule so that local fans can no longer rely on only cable providers to watch their teams' games.[9]
TheToronto Blue Jays' blackout territory includes all ofCanada. However, they must shareBritish Columbia andAlberta with the Seattle Mariners,Saskatchewan andManitoba with the Minnesota Twins, andthe Maritimes with the Boston Red Sox. In the past, the province ofQuebec was not included in Toronto's territory, as it belonged to theMontreal Expos exclusively. Toronto and Montreal shared all territory outside ofOntario and Quebec. Toronto Blue Jays games are aired onSportsnet in Canada. Also, Blue Jays games broadcast nationallyover-the-air on theCanadian Broadcasting Corporation television network have occasionally been subject to local blackout onCBET-TV inWindsor, Ontario, to protect the territorial rights of theDetroit Tigers across theDetroit River. No American RSNs are available on Canadian specialty television providers.
Consumer devices that enable television subscribers to transmit their home television feed outside their host area to a remote location over theInternet, a practice calledplaceshifting, have drawn the ire of MLB. MLB's position is that subscribers who wish to watch MLB telecasts while traveling either settle for the local telecasts available or subscribe to MLB's own broadcasts for an additional fee. Consumer advocates insist the practice is legal since the remoted content is already purchased and is merely placeshifted by the subscriber; they claim MLB is asking fans to pay twice for the same content. MLB counters that travelers utilizing placeshifting technology are undercutting the blackout rights MLB grants to local and national broadcasters, as well as MLB's own internet service.[citation needed]
In 2009, MLB launchedMLB Network on basic cable similar to theNFL Network. As part of the new network, MLB has told owners to reduce their blackouts due to outrage amongst fans and letters pouring into MLB's offices. In particular, MLB is looking to address the availability of regional sports networks outside teams' immediate home markets. Ostensibly, if teams/channels are not available in certain locations, teams could lose their claims to such areas and coverage would be replaced by the MLB-controlledExtra Innings service.[citation needed]
In MLB, there are radio blackouts.ESPN Radio has exclusive rights to the World Series and only theflagship stations of the two participating ballclubs can originate coverage, though their broadcasts are also available onSirius XM (as of April 2021, both on satellite radio and streaming[10]), as well as the subscription Gameday Audio package onMLB.com and MLB.tv. All other network affiliates of the two clubs must carry the ESPN Radio feed, and they may not even be able to do so if they compete with an ESPN Radio affiliate in the same market. Additionally, the two flagships must broadcast ESPN Radio national commercials during their game coverage (though they can run live commercial reads for local sponsors during broadcasts and sell ads during typically extended pre/post-game shows.WCNN, the Braves' flagship station, occasionally didn't air such national commercials and aired its normal local advertising during its coverage 2021 World Series, and also didn't credit ESPN's sponsorship). The flagship stations are also required to credit the same presenting radio sponsor of the World Series as ESPN Radio (in recent years,AutoZone).
Additionally, radio stations (including flagships) are not allowed to broadcast any MLB games in the liveInternetstreams of their station programming outside of the flagship station's DMA (example:WDAE, which is the Rays Radio Network flagship, is only allowed to stream its coverage within Pasco, Pinellas, and Hillsborough counties) or on out-of-market radio affiliates that carry the station's main signal. (MLB makes its own streams of the team networks available for a fee.) Some stations will replace the game with a recorded message explaining why the game cannot be heard on their stream. Others will simply stream the station's regularly scheduled programming that is being preempted by the game. Additionally, ESPN Radio also restricts online streaming of their coverage of regular season games to listeners located both within the United States and outside the markets of the teams involved in the games, regardless of the application used.
During the 2021 Postseason, theAtlanta Braves streamed its coverage of their entire postseason run completely free of geo-blocking restrictions, including their NLDS, NLCS, and World Series appearances.