[ptmcc]

You're completely right, and as a baseball fan myself I deeply sympathize, but it's not so much MLB that is the problem (today) but the patchwork of cable-based Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) that have contracts for exclusive broadcast rights from MLB that were inked years ago. In a lot of cases teams even have ownership stakes in their own RSN. So now all the local broadcast rights (and $$$) belong to these RSNs instead of MLB themselves. And most/all of them broadcast exclusively on cable and offer limited-to-no streaming options.

There's been some hinting from MLB that they know blackouts are painful for fans, but without being able to alter/cancel the RSN contracts they're up shit creek, legally speaking.

What's interesting right now is that Diamond Sports Group (Bally Sports) just recently declared bankruptcy and they own/operate the RSNs for almost half of MLB teams. They are behind on their rights payments and MLB is trying to forcibly get broadcast rights back so they can presumably stream on mlb.tv. If that happens it could give MLB some power and put the issue more front and center. Maybe. Here's hoping.

And I don't mean to white knight MLB here, they made this bed for themselves by making exclusive deals with RSNs in the past. But now it's not as easy as MLB just ending blackouts by decree. Not without a lot of lawsuits.

But someday it has to happen. For the good of the game and fanbase. Please be soon.

[Larrikin]

Seems like Marquee has some relationship to Bally and Sinclair so hopefully the bankruptcy helps. But it is absolutely disgusting to me that the network was created just to make it harder to watch Cubs' games so they could make more money after decades of them being free to watch. It wasn't some old regional network deal, the network was created in 2020 when cord cutting was well underway.

[ptmcc]

Oof that's dumb as hell I didn't realize it was such a recent deal