MLB's New Streaming Plan

This is progress?

MLB’s New Streaming Plan

The history of baseball on television is really a history that needs to be written.

I know a few things about it. I know that television stations originally only broadcast home games, for example, because the technology did not allow for broadcast signals to be quickly relayed from other cities. I also know that owners blamed a lot of the attendance problems of the 1950s on television, even though the decaying ballparks and political policies leading to urban decay were likely more responsible.

Television was seen as the enemy of sports owners for decades. In fact, certain frustrating television policies, like the 3 PM television blackout for soccer games in England, are largely the result of the lingering distrust of television.

But the crazy thing is that live television is actually the best friend of sports owners. There is no advertising medium in this world better than televising live sporting events. Except for one thing: live streaming.

And that’s why MLB’s new plan makes no sense to me.

If you haven’t heard the news yet, MLB’s online offerings are now being partnered with ESPN. This means that ESPN will be handling MLB’s streaming service. You can read more about it here, or in other articles scattered throughout the internet.

The rules of the new deal are pretty straightforward. Out of market games on MLB.TV will be available to fans for $150 per season, or $30 per month. This is a cost increase, though it’s relatively minor. But, of course, this only includes the games that are out of market; if you’re unlucky enough to live in a geographic area that is claimed by several teams, the out-of-market package might not look very attractive to you.

There are actually a few ways you can get the package for cheaper or for free, depending on your circumstances. This comes from Jacob Feldman on X:

All of that is good and well - but there’s a big problem with this plan. And this problem is that Major League Baseball is basically guaranteed not to add any new fans with this arrangement.

It’s been a while, but I’ve written before about the problems with putting all sports on pay television:

We’re in a different environment today than, say, the Chicago White Sox were in the early 1980s, when their games were put behind a cable television paywall. In fact, showing games on free over-the-air television these days isn’t quite as effective as it was in the early 1990s or before. That’s because the vast majority of young people stream content.

Major League Baseball is increasingly becoming a sport that you only watch if you’re already a fan. And, as prices increase and the ridiculous television blackout policies remain in place, it’s becoming more expensive and less attractive to remain a fan of the current product.

Of course, the worst part of all is that both out-of-market and in market regular season games aren’t really worth much these days. The expanded postseason ensures that the regular season amounts to little more than a long seeding exercise.

We’ll likely never go back to the days when a pennant race really meant something, back to when fans clamored for tickets to games between the biggest teams at the end of September. However, I really have to ask who in their right mind would want to shell over an extra $150 to watch an increasingly meaningless regular season that winds up only being a prelude to the month-long postseason tournament.

You’d think that they’d use these regular season games as advertising for the premium product. Instead, it remains relatively easy to get the postseason games, and the games nobody wants are the games stuck behind the paywall.

I’ll never understand it.