Snippet: The Sad State of MLB’s Blackout Policy ☇

I love baseball, but I live in an area where I cannot watch my favorite team, the Chicago Cubs, as most cable providers have designated me as being in a Cincinnati Reds market, but Major League Baseball thinks I should be able to get both. Linus Edwards shares his thoughts on a similar situation on VintageZen:

…In Carlisle [Pennsylvania], while it is technically a home market for the Philadelphia Phillies, almost none of their regular season broadcasts are shown here. In most areas of the Phillies home market, games are shown on the Philadelphia Comcast Sportsnet channel, however, in Carlisle we get the bizarro Mid-Atlantic Comcast Sportsnet channel which doesn’t show any Phillies games and mostly concentrates on Washington and Baltimore sports…

…However, the MLB’s labyrinth of blackout rules ruins this ideal set up. Both the MLB Extra Innings and MLB.tv packages blackout all games of teams that are part of your home market. This supposedly is meant to protect local television affiliates from having viewers taken away who watch through the package… although the package usually broadcasts the same feed as the local channel. That’s where I enter a no-man’s land by living in Carlisle, PA. For some unknown reason, Carlisle is designated as a home market for the Phillies, blacking out all their games, even though almost none of their regular season games are shown on local television here.

I’ve complained about this before, but I think it really is time that Major League Baseball stops leaving money on the table from willing subscribers.