[next_xibalba]

I would never agree to this. But it doesn't strike me as particularly unethical, either. So long as both parties understand what they're agreeing to, this seems perfectly fine.

If, for example, the NFL ever did this, I would just not watch.

[saghm]

I'm not sure about other sports, but for the MLB, there are some very strange policies that make it difficult to watch games even if you want to pay for it, mostly stemming from the local broadcasters of the games. Even if you sign up for the subscription service to stream games, they'll "black out" the games that they expect you to be able to watch by getting a cable subscription, which not only is ridiculous (since one on of the main selling points for streaming is to not have to pay for a bundle of things you mostly don't want to be able to get the few things you do), but it assumes that people will never be traveling and unable to watch the games locally even if they do normally have access to it. My dad frequently travels for work, and he pays for the streaming service mostly to be able to watch Phillies games despite living in the Boston area, but the blackout rules mean that he can't even watch the Red Sox games with the streaming service if he's traveling outside of Boston. He also can't watch the Phillies games when they play the Red Sox in Boston, which is mostly fine, but it's still a little weird since he'll be have to watch the Red Sox broadcast (and therefore their commentators) rather than the Phillies one he's used to seeing for their games. The games that are given special slots on ESPN also tend to be blacked out for everyone, so that also causes issues for people wanting to stream them even if it's not a local game. The whole model seems to be more about trying to railroad people in paying for a less convenient, more expensive product even when they actively want to pay for something that's actually available but artificially limited. I don't get why anyone would be surprised that people just turn to "piracy" when things work like this.

[hearsathought]

Why doesn't he just save himself the time, money and hassle and just watch the highlights or highlight clips.

I understand why the NFL is going the stream route given how popular it is already. They can afford to inconvenience people. But MLB has been stagnant or declining for so long. You'd think they'd make their content more accessible to grow the fan base.

[saghm]

I think he enjoys having the entire game on in the background. He's partially switched over to listening to the radio broadcasts for games, which apparently are often provided online as well (which makes sense, given nothing really needs to change in terms of how they make money to provide it online instead of via a radio station).

What's weird to me is that the MLB does seem to genuinely be trying to make changes in terms of gameplay to try to keep relevant (especially around reviews for on-field calls, but also in terms of some of the changes in recent years that were controversial but seem to have produced meaningful results in reversing some of the creep in how long it takes for games to finish), and my understanding is that they basically were the first major sports league in the US to invest in streaming technology, to the point where I remember reading that the NHL app (and maybe some of the others) were originally developed and maintained by MLB's programmers as well. I'm not sure how they've managed to fall so far behind in terms of streaming experience; the most apparent difference is that the baseball season is over ten times as many games, which presumably could have some sort of effect on things, but my naive expectation would be that it would incentive having a stable infrastructure for this even more. Maybe it's just a matter of them being able to get away with blocking some games because there are still so many others that don't get blocked during the rest of the season? With only 16 games in a regular season, blocking even one of them might just be something viewers are less willing to put up with.

[toast0]

> I'm not sure how they've managed to fall so far behind in terms of streaming experience

It's because they need to keep the broadcasters and the teams happy and broadcasters want to have exclusive content. In some markets, teams want local blackouts to help get butts in seats.

[DangitBobby]

And this is how free markets result in dystopia.

[next_xibalba]

Yes, regulation, with its whole screen occupying cookie permission modals is truly the way. Or, even better, collectivism-under which we’re all so poor there are no professional sports!

[DangitBobby]

I mean, cookie permission modals are annoying but it's not exactly The Jungle out here.

[throwaway894345]

The whole copyright institution seems pretty unethical to me. It's wild that someone can own the royalties to a particular piece of content for 70+ years after the original creator dies (at least that's the law in the US, I assume similar elsewhere), and that the creator can unilaterally name his price for licenses to that content (you can't even know if you want the content without first paying for a license to consume it) and then if you want to put the content into a different format (for example, if you own an HD Blu-Ray and want to put it on a hard drive) you effectively have to pay for a _new license_ for the same content. This is just scratching the surface of the ethical bankruptcy associated with intellectual property.