As a general rule I think that MLB does a great job connecting to fans in the digital age. It has contests, apps and a range of programs that make it easy to follow your team, and others, from your phone, computer and television.
The one area that it seems to be in the dark ages on is in its blackout policy, which seems to give teams huge latitude in what areas they can claim as their own and prevent the broadcasting of games there, using MLB.TV
We mentioned it briefly several months ago when a post from a poor fan in Hawaii noted that despite the presence of the Pacific Ocean, which most would believe hinder any sudden decision to drop in on a ball game, he was blacked out from watching games from nine different teams including ones as far away as Texas.
Now a group has filed a class action lawsuit claiming that MLB is in violation of the Sherman Act, according to a nice piece on the suit by Yahoo Sports Jeff Passan who notes that Bud Selig, MLB’s commissioner promised to fix the problem six years ago.
The issue is that baseball gains so much from the broadcast rights from regional sports networks and the networks want exclusive rights in exchange for the millions they hand over to the teams. However it does seem odd that it has allowed some networks to claim areas that are a time zone or more away, and that do not carry the networks broadcasting.
With its hard to predict what the result of this case will be, and with baseball’s antitrust exemption it would be hard to bet against them winning, but it would be nice if it actually did make some changes so that fans could see games that they want to.
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