It was only a few weeks ago that we were discussing how, thanks to how fractured streaming has become, watching NFL games is becoming more and more an expensive and complicated process. It’s gotten so bad that ESPN has released an app designed specifically just to help viewers find where to watch the NFL game they’re interested in. But finding it alone doesn’t mean you can watch it, what with the labyrinthian landscape of different cable and streaming providers the NFL has negotiated to show its games. The point is not only that this is getting far too expensive for fans, but that there is a mental transactional cost associated with all of this as well.
I paid for MLB.tv, and couldn’t watch my team. So I paid for a VPN and could watch my team for a few weeks, then that stopped working too. Even when it was working, some games wouldn’t be available, or they’d be on Apple TV that day, or ESPN Pro, or some other paid service. So despite paying several hundred dollars per year to watch one baseball team, I ended up watching the rest of the season on “illicit streaming”. The MLB keeps changing rules, saying they’re doing it to entice a younger audience, but refuses to make it actually possible to watch your local team. Stop fucking with the game, and just make viewing games accessible, and they’ll find new fans.
The idea of fans a local teams is just a racket honestly. It is all arbitrary
“local” has a bizarre definition. Iowa is blacked out of Twins, Brewers, Royals, Cubs, White Sox and Cardinals games. None of which are carried locally.
MLB.tv absolutely does this on purpose. Early in the season they let VPNs through so you don’t cancel immediately, then they start cracking down mid summer.
I pay for MLB TV, because I live in a different media market than my favorite team. So it works perfectly! Unless I’m visiting my parents. Or often when I’m traveling. Or is the game is on cable. Or the weird exclusive games like Apple TV. Or if it’s the playoffs. Or because the chemtrails are too thick that day so the lizard people are out. But works perfectly!
Seriously, though, MLB does work pretty well and I do like some features (syncing radio broadcast with the TV, condensed games if I missed one). But it’s very weird that most of my family who lives within 20 miles of the stadium can’t watch the team when I live hundreds of miles away and can.
It’s very fucked up. Do they actually think that I’m going to take time off work and go watch every game at the stadium which is 1.5 hours from my house just because they won’t let me see the team I want on a service I paid for? No! All it makes me do is like and watch baseball less. But I guess they don’t care, they already got their cable provider money.