With the 2011 MLB.TV subscription prices likely to be announced over the next couple of weeks, the recent news story about Premiership TV rights has raised the topic of ‘blackouts’ in sports.

The European Commission Advocate Generals are to recommend that the Premier League’s practice of selling TV rights on a territorial basis in Europe is “contrary to European Union law”.  Currently the Premier League’s rights model allows them to tightly control the live broadcasting of games in the UK, limiting the number of games available and at what time the live games are played.

This effectively means that a lot of games are ‘blacked out’ and cannot be seen unless you are a) at the game in person, or b) picking up an illegal feed from another European country where many more games are broadcast.  It’s that second practice that has led to the current court case and, if the Advocate General opinion is accepted, may no longer be deemed illegal after all.

The story has provoked interest from the David versus Goliath perspective of the pub landlord taking on the Premier League, as well as starting a debate on how the Premier League may change the way in which they sell their TV rights in Europe.  However, it’s the blackout aspect of the current system that is worth considering in relation to Major League Baseball.

Blackouts are often discussed in the States because they can have a significant impact on the ability of sports fans to watch their team.  This is particularly the case with the online MLB.TV subscription. 

It is sold to North Americans as a way to watch “out-of-market” games.  MLB.com shows all 2,430 regular season games, but depending on where you live you could have access to significantly less than this.  For example, one article about the MLB blackout rules notes that fans in the state of Iowa cannot watch the Brewers, Cardinals, Cubs, Royals, Twins or White Sox. 

In theory, games in a person’s market are blacked out because they are broadcast by local networks, but that’s not necessarily the case and a fan can be blacked out even though they have no other option to watch the game and live miles away from the ballpark in question.  Games are also blacked out on Saturday afternoon and Sunday night as there are national broadcasts during this period on FOX and ESPN respectively.

There are also many barriers to following Premier League games live in the UK.  You have to pay for a subscription to Sky Sports or ESPN if you want to see any Premier League football in the first place.  No league games are showed live on TV at the traditional 3 p.m. kick-off time on Saturday and the games that are broadcast on TV are often moved to different days and inconvenient times that annoy the fans who actually want to go to the games. 

And yet Brits don’t tend to talk about blackouts much.  Continue reading →