Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 512: TV Blackouts Will Rot Your Brain

Episode Date: August 12, 2014

Sam and Craig Goldstein bring on Wendy Thurm to talk about a big ruling out of New York that could affect MLB’s television territories and blackouts.

starting with a little song, okay. Ben isn't here and we're lacking production, so this is me singing you the introduction, Effectively Wild. Good morning and welcome to episode 512 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from baseball perspectives, presented by the Play Index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller. Not with Ben Lindberg. Ben had a sad thing happen in his life today, so he is taking the day off. It is his first, if you can believe it,

his first missed episode since episode eight of this show, the famous screen door episode. So the Iron Man has taken a day off. Craig Goldstein is here in his place. Baseball Perspectives is Craig Goldstein. How are you, Craig? I'm wonderful. Thank you. And we have a guest as well to talk to Craig and I. It's the wonderful Wendy Thurm, who you know from fan graphs primarily, but has written at most other sites with a dot com. Wendy, how are you? I'm great, Sam. How are you? Good. And Wendy also wrote a chapter in the Baseball Perspectives Annual this year. We're all fans of Wendy. And

Wendy, one of the things that Wendy is incredible at is distilling complicated information about things like TV contracts, which Ben and I almost never talk about, even though they're one of the dominant stories in the sport right now, because we have a hard time holding the details in our head long enough to ask each other intelligent questions. Wendy does not have that problem. She writes wonderfully about them, and she is one of the places that we most often go to for information. And there are a lot of things going on with TV contracts right now. So we're going to talk about three or four

of them, if that's okay. So, Wendy, it seems to me that a couple years ago, all these TV contracts were like this great, glorious part of the sport where every team's fans got to see their team sign some insane contract that would allow them to sign every big free agent for the next 20 years. And then sometime in the last couple of years, they've turned into this really sort of depressing sideshow where the Padres didn't have TV coverage in a lot of San Diego for a long time and the Astros didn't. And now, right now, the Dodgers don't have TV coverage for 70 percent of their

fans and the Nationals and the Orioles are locked into this really kind of grimy and sometimes salacious battle over their TV contract. Is this like is this like sort of a fallen Eden? Are we going to see huge fights about TV contracts in every market for the next 10 years? Well, you know, I don't know the answer to that. But I will say that once you put aside the team-owned regional sports network, so let us put aside for the moment our discussion of the YES Network, which the Yankees recently divested majority ownership of. But when the network started, it was essentially owned by the same controlling company that owns the Yankees, the Steinbrenner Group, whatever that's called. We've got Nesson, New England Sports Network, which is a Red Sox-owned entity, and we have SNY in New York, Sports New York, which is a Mets – actually, it's a Wilpon-owned entity, and there's a little bit of monkey business in there in terms of the cash flow between the Mets and SNY because of all the financial issues that the Wilpons have had. cash flow between the Mets and SNY because of all the financial issues that the Wilpons have had. So let's put those aside for the moment and talk about kind of the straight on kind of big cash right fee deals that we started seeing. And the first one really wasn't that long ago was the Texas Rangers kind of kicked off this boom among majorly baseball teams in,

you know, kind of bigger markets. So that was the, I don't have memorized the exact broadcast territory for the Texas Rangers. It's broader than just Dallas. It's kind of North Texas and probably parts of some surrounding states. So what that meant was, I think it's Fox Southwest or whatever the regional sports network is there, they agreed to pay the Rangers some crazy amount of money. Southwest or whatever, whatever the regional sports network is there, you know, they, they agreed to pay the Rangers some crazy amount of money. I think it was like $120 million every year for the right to broadcast their games for some period of time. Then, then the Angels were the second deal. I think they came in at 150 million a year and, and that, and that kind of kicked off, you know, this kind of little boomlet we've had. And a lot of

kind of who got to cash in had to do with which teams had contracts that either had outs, you know, like we have a right to renegotiate after X number of years or contracts that were expiring during, you know, during the boomlet. And some teams have been able to take advantage of it just by the nature of, I guess, being lucky or being shrewd, depending on who negotiated the prior deal. But for a regional sports network to commit to paying, let's say, the Los Angeles Angels $150 million a year, that regional sports network, which I believe is Fox, one of the Foxes out in Southern California, you know, they've got to recoup that money plus, you know, a little profit, right? So there are kind of two ways to do that. One is to sell advertising time, sell, you know, a little profit, right? So there are kind of two ways to do that. One is to sell

advertising time. So, you know, time during the broadcast and during other programming. The other way is to charge a fee to all the cable and satellite companies in the broadcast area who want to carry that sports network, typically known as a carriage fee. And depending on kind of, you know, how much the regional sports network agrees to pay the team, you know, they've got to recoup that. And we've seen the carriage fee negotiations get much more protracted as the regional sports networks try to recoup that money

and you know so you know the angels were able to come to not the angels the angel sports network was able to come to a deal and and their broadcast on kind of every you know every cable and satellite company carries that network either in the sports package or otherwise in the Southern California area. You know, the same was true for the Rangers. The Phillies just did a new contract, which is going to kick in next year. And I don't think, you know, I haven't heard anything about their having problems. But in some kind of smaller markets, you mentioned San Diego, you mentioned Houston, where maybe the team isn't so popular, you know, particularly the Astros, who are going through, you know, rebuilding, and they've been losing, and they,

you know, they've seen their fan base erode. In that situation, the Astros, the Houston Rockets, the NBA, and Comcast Sports Group kind of went in together to kind of form a new regional sports network. But then when they went out to negotiate with DirecTV and Dish and AT&T about carrying that network, the cable and satellite company said, no, thanks. I mean, you just want to charge too much. And so we're not hearing a clamoring from our customers that we have to have gsn houston and so no i mean no we're not going to carry your network at that price um and so you know when that happens you've got you've got a a regional sports network committed to paying a team now with like a huge cash spigot that's been completely turned off and the whole system kind

of collapses well and and you know you said for for philly or or potentially uh for houston teams that aren't popular that they're going to have that issue but that's i mean that's what's happening in in la for the dodgers right um the the same issue is that they've, they got, they essentially have their money from Time Warner Cable and they said, well, it's up to Time Warner Cable to meet, you know, the demands of the customers in terms of the carriage fee and what's acceptable. Is that correct? I mean, because they're obviously a popular team given how well they've played the last couple of years and the money invested in them them and yet they still can't even get the deal done right and let me just say i i did not suggest and if i misspoke i apologize i did not suggest that the phillies deal which kicks in for next

season um there's that they were going to be issues catch fees i haven't heard anything to suggest that that doesn't mean it won't happen i just i haven't heard anything or read anything to suggest that the new um the new comcast uh sportsnet philadelphia deal you know they're going to have trouble getting direct tv and dish and at&t to carry that carry that station, you know, it's currently being carried. So it's a, now, just because CSN, Philadelphia, and the Phillies contract expired and starts anew in 2015, that doesn't mean that the carriage fee agreements expire at the same time. And so, anyway, I just wanted to make clear to the listeners that I don't think there's an issue in Philadelphia yet. But you're correct about the Dodgers.

And the Dodgers kind of seeing what happened in San Diego, seeing what happened in Houston, their deal from everything that's been reported and what I've reported is that Time Warner is obligated to pay them regardless of whether or not Time Warner, you know, what carriage fee deals they work out with the cable and satellite companies in LA. So, you know, I don't know what the contract language says and I don't, I'm not privy to whether or not all those payments have been made and made on time pursuant to whatever, you know, payment schedule had been worked out. But but the Dodgers in that negotiation, Time Warner took on the burden of having to go out and get those deals and agree to pay the Dodgers, you know, whatever the two hundred and fifty million dollars a year. They're supposedly going to be paid to broadcast those games.

be paid to broadcast those games. Now, L.A., yes, the Dodgers are very popular, but L.A. has seen a situation where, you know, the Angels got their deal. And so, you know, Fox Sportsnet, Southern California, whatever it's called, you know, they charge a carriage fee. The Lakers did a new deal a year or two before the Dodgers. That's kind of a new station. They have a carriage deal. So, you know, these cable and satellite companies have to kind of decide, you know, are they going to carry all these sports networks? You know, what is the demand for them? Are they going to carry them in a sports package and kind of cram that, you know, a large fee, you know, down the throat of all their customers? You know, are they going to make it, you know, a tier? You know, how they're going to do it.

And, you know, DirecTV has a huge percentage of the household subscribers in the LA area. And they're the entity that's played hardball the most with Sportsnet LA. And what DirecTV has said is we'll agree to a number, a carriage deal number that's on a per subscriber basis. We're not agreeing to take, you know, we're not going to agree, like, well, let's agree to a number and everybody wants Sportsnet LA, we'll pay that number, but we're not going to put it on a tier. We're not going to force it on every customer whether they want it or not. And that gets to this whole question of bundled packages and the difference between bundled packages and a la carte, you know, a la carte packages. So, I mean, for the most part,

cable and satellite consumers don't have a lot of choice. I mean, you have your basic tier and then you can you can buy, you know, a range of movie channels, you can buy a range of sports channels, but, you know, you don't get to pick and choose for the most part. And, you know, the whole question of bundling versus a la carte is a huge, huge, huge issue in just kind of you know cable and satellite company you know economics and finances in the next you know three to five years it's just a huge huge issue so when a situation like this comes up where a market can't see their home teams games usually it seems that the the team itself will act uh slightly, slightly chagrined,

but mostly they'll express sympathy with the viewer and scold. Sometimes they'll scold the cable companies that can't work something out. So two parts to this. One is do the teams, like for instance, do the Dodgers lose anything in this situation? Do you feel like this matters at all? I mean, they're getting their money either way. Is there a significant loss in their bottom line at all if this goes on further? And second of all, is there any blame that should go to them? Should they have foreseen that this might actually be a realistic outcome if they signed this particular deal with

this particular company and didn't have any particular clauses in place to keep it from happening? Well, I, you know, let me take the second part first, because, again, as I understand it, the Dodgers did foresee the possibility that there would be protracted and, you know, potentially unsuccessful negotiations over carriage fee deals you know, potentially unsuccessful negotiations over carriage fee deals in the first year of the contract and maybe, you know, maybe in other deals of the contract, right? The Dodgers and Sportsnet LA have a 25-year deal. Typically, the carriage fee arrangement between a regional sports network and cable and satellite companies isn't a 25-year deal. It's maybe a three-year deal, a five-year deal, right? Where that, what that carriage fee number is going to be, what that dollar amount is, gets renegotiated, you know, because the economics and the programming choices and the technology,

you know, in this arena is changing so rapidly. So those deals are not, you know, those deals are not 25-year deals. So, but by negotiating with Time Warner, that Time Warner would be on the hook to pay the Dodgers no matter what happened. The Dodgers obviously, you know, foresaw that that that there that there might be a problem. And, you know, whether they thought it might be a problem for part of a season, a whole season, two seasons, you know, I don't know. part of a season, a whole season, two seasons, you know, I don't know. So, you know, are they somewhat to blame? You know, yeah, because they negotiated a deal that would be in the best interest of the franchise if, in fact, Time Warner's on the hook and if, in fact, Time Warner, you know, pays them. Obviously, parties, you know, renege on contracts all the time for a variety of reasons. And then, you know,

usually it ends up in court. But, you know, that kind of goes to the first question, which is, you know, the Dodgers have been pretty aggressive from a PR perspective about, you know, they had Josh Beckett's no-hitter, you had Clayton Kershaw's no-hitter, you've got, you know, Yasiel Puig, you know, one of the most exciting players in baseball. You know, you've, until recently, nobody knew if this was going to be vince gully's last year and you've got 70 of the market that can't see the games so um that sounds to me like something that really isn't good in the short and medium term you know for the for the franchise. You've got, you know, there's only so many ways that fans, you know, can interact, you know, with a team.

You know, there's radio that people can go to bars and try and watch it. Obviously, you know, the Dodgers have an incredibly robust attendance. They have the highest attendance in the league. They're going to go blow well past 3 million, probably hit three and a half million uh this year i mean dodgers have always had strong attendance they dipped in the mccourt ears but but you know came back last year and it's even stronger this year which isn't a surprise they're in first place in the national league west they're probably gonna win

the division so um you know it i mean it strikes me that it would be a, you know, a short term hit and fans are going to be annoyed. And, you know, fans just, you know, I don't I don't know how long it takes fans to kind of cement the idea in their head that they're going to take it out on the team versus, you know, taking it out on somebody else. Or, you know, have their fandom, you know, wane a little bit because of the TV situation. So, you know, so that's where they are. I mean, it was it was definitely foreseeable. They negotiated it knowing it was foreseeable. And how much it's going to hurt the franchise, it's not going to hurt their bottom line in the short term, but how much it might kind of hurt them, you know, with with their fans. I think it remains to be seen. Would it be fair to say that nobody in this dispute in LA or presumably in Houston or

elsewhere where these type of things are going on is really advocating on behalf of the fan? It seems to me like each entity that's involved kind of presents itself as doing that you know direct tv is trying to say well we're not going to pass on an unacceptable carriage fee to our consumers you know who don't want it and and the dodgers probably you know are saying you know we want our everyone to be able to see us and all of that. But in reality, the DirecTV could take a smaller financial hit and provide this to everyone at a price that's presumably acceptable and still provides them with profit. You know, so basically everyone's looking out for their bottom line in this deal and no one's really actually advocating on behalf of the people who want to see the games is that a reasonable proposition uh you know i i think in the broad strokes that's probably a fair a fair statement but i think the important thing to realize is um you're talking about no one's looking out for the fan.

You know, figuring out who the fans are, like what the actual, you know, DirecTV is kind of what they want to say is, well, let's see what your demand is. You're this hugely popular team. You know, let's see. If we make it available just on an a la carte basis, let's see how many people sign up for, you know, at six bucks a month to have sports in la in addition to you know fox sports southern california whatever the laker station is and whatnot um what direct tv you know is i mean they're theoretically uh standing up for kind

of quote consumers as a whole saying we're just going to do this carriage deal at five dollars a month and just, you know, ram it down the throats of all of our consumers without knowing how many of them really want this channel. Now, you know, it's it's somewhat hypocritical, not maybe not even somewhat hypocritical of DirecTV, which which has its own set of regional sports networks. which has its own set of regional sports networks. DirecTV is the owner, you know, through a variety of corporate structures of Root Sports networks. So that's Root Sports. They broadcast the Rockies. They broadcast the Pirates. And they're the new entity with whom the Mariners have their new broadcast deal.

So, you know, Root Sports, Pittsburgh, you know, they're not, that's not offered on an a la carte basis. You know, Root Sports, Denver is not offered on an a la carte basis. So, you know, it's not like DirecTV when they're on the other side, they're not, you know, they're trying to, they act like the RSN there. They don't act like the cable and satellite company. You know, what's interesting in the Houston area, and I've written about this, is that the cable and satellite companies have been trying to develop much more finely tuned metrics to identify kind of what the level of fandom actually is. Like how, you know, how many, you know, how many people, you know, want CSN Houston or how many people want the Astros and the Rockets and that all the kind of programming that you'd get on that station. And the Wall Street Journal talked to a bunch of people at the cable and satellite companies in the Houston area. And they said, you know, we we don't just rely on kind of the Nielsen ratings. We're going to kind of a much more granular level. And we you know, we just don't think there's demand for it.

And, you know, in Houston that this dispute's been going on, this is the third season. And, you know, I mean, the rockets are probably a more entertaining and, and in demand product, but you know, you're now going on, it's like two and a half seasons where the Astros haven't been on TV and in most of the market. And, you know, as far as I know, there hasn't been like a significant shift in people, you know, dropping one cable and satellite company and getting another one so that they can, you know, getting Comcast so they can get Comcast, you know, sports of national cable, you know, not regional sports, like ESPN or Fox Sports One or CBS Sports, you know, station and whatever the national kind of cable sports stations are. You know, it's just we've just as consumers, we've just been, you know, kind of being fed, well, if you want sports, here's the sports package and people getting, having to pay for, and, you know, a ton of, you know, both the

regional networks and national networks that they may or may not want. I mean, it's the whole question of, you know, half a set of homes in a regional area might want Disney and the other half might want ESPN, but because of the market power of Disney, if you, you know, if you want Disney, you got to take ESPN if you're the cable and satellite companies and that just gets passed down to the consumers. So, you know, this kind of issue of trying to identify what the actual demand is for some of these things and then figuring out a system where people essentially are only paying for what they want.

I mean, if that if you if we went to that kind of system, it would it would turn the economics of kind of cable and satellite companies completely on its head. So you know, I don't know that we're seeing kind of the end of the rainbow in terms of contracts for, you know, big, big contracts for, for teams in big markets, but I, I just don't think we're going to see, I mean, I just, the Dodgers are, I mean, the Dodgers deal, I'm not, I'm not even sure under the economics that they were aware of at the time that that deal should have been done, but I, deal should have been done. But we're not going to see deals like the Angels got and the Rangers got. I mean, we're just not going to see deals like that. So in the meantime, Dodgers and Astros fans who

can't watch the games on TV also can't watch the games on MLB TV or extra innings because they're under the same blackout rules as everybody else is, where you can't see your local team's broadcasts on these extra services. And you wrote today about a court case that is moving ahead that pits consumers against, I guess, against what the RSNs themselves and against Major League Baseball, against what the RSNs themselves and against Major League Baseball, which sells the packages, saying that these violate antitrust statutes and that if you pay for every game, you ought to be able to get every game. This seems like it cannot possibly succeed. Why am I wrong? The blackout rules are a symptom of a larger system that is really under attack, and that's the system of exclusive broadcast territories. as to where each team, you know, may broadcast and where they may exclude practically every other team from doing, you know, sending in their signal, you know, for a local game.

And, you know, other than, you know, obviously there are certain territories where there's more than one team. And then there's many parts of the country where there are broadcast territories where there are no teams, for example, in Iowa and other, you know, other parts of the country where there's no team in the state, but six teams have broadcast territories that kind of overlap there. And yet the RSNs don't actually, you know, they're not picked up by cable and satellite companies. So like not, I mean, so you're in Iowa, you you're, you know, 16 have you in their exclusive territory, but no, the RSNs aren't carried there. And then there are the blackout rules. So then you can't see anything. But it's the exclusive broadcast territories that's directly under attack under the antitrust laws by basically saying, I mean, it's MLB in, you know, is that is acting like a,

you know, I mean, they have monopoly power in the market of the broadcast of MLB games, and they are, you know, they're basically acting like a cartel by just dividing up, you know, the territories and saying, you know, only the Phillies, you know, have the right to show their games as a local matter, you know, in their area. And, you know, the Yankees can't show their games as a local matter in that area or in the Mets can't and the Nationals can't. And the theory is, is that that is both a restriction on, you know, it's a restriction on product availability and therefore also has a tendency to increase the price. I mean, so it seems like it might not, I mean, how could this possibly work as a court case, but it's a pretty standard antitrust theory, you know, limiting output in order to restrict competition and having the effect of pushing up the price.

Now, blackouts happen because the regional sports networks and the cable and satellite companies have built their systems on this notion of exclusivity, right? So you wouldn't get a deal like the Angels getting $150 million a year from Fox Sports, Southern California, whatever it's called, if, you know, they didn't have if if the Angels didn't have the one in the game in that area. And I mean, that so that's one of the, you know, building blocks of why you why we've gotten to see these kind of huge contracts. Now, the defendants in the lawsuit are Major League Baseball, kind of the the corporate ownership group. So like Fox Sports and Comcast Sports Group that own a lot of the RSNs, and then also a bunch of the cable and satellite companies. They're all defendants in

the lawsuit. And what the court ruled on was something called a motion for summary judgment, which is a procedural, it's a motion that the federal rules of procedure allow parties to bring to the court and say either, you know, the plaintiff, you know, even if the plaintiff doesn't have enough evidence to make this worthy of going to a trial, or even if you accept all the plaintiff's evidence is true, the law doesn't support the plaintiff's claim. And so the Major League Baseball and its partners filed a lawsuit, I mean, sorry, filed the motion and said, number one, the antitrust law doesn't apply because we have this exemption.

We can talk about that exemption in more detail if you want. And two, even if it does apply, our exclusive broadcast territory system is actually very pro-competitive. And then MLB gave a list of reasons as to why it believed it was pro-competitive. And the plaintiffs came back and said, and they, declarations from media economists and sports economists and, you know, a bunch of evidence to suggest that, in fact, if there was no exclusivity, you'd have more competition and you'd have more product output and the prices would drop. And what the court said was, well, I'm not going to say that that's enough to prove a violation, but it's certainly enough to allow the case to go to a trial. And so there's going to be a trial date and whether there's going to be a trial, you know, remains to be seen. I mean, this is, you know, this is big, big, big risk for Major League Baseball and its broadcast partners. I mean, it's one of these like, you know, it would completely change the economics of,

you know, of all these, you know, regional sport network deals. And it would also have the effect, it would also have an effect on the national broadcast deals because, you know, those are, those those the national broadcast deals are there and kind of on the assumption that they are exclusive in their own way. So anyway, it's a big, big deal. I mean, whether it goes to trial and kind of what happens after that, you know, there's a lot to happen between now and then, but it's possible. now and then, but it's possible. Yeah. And you note that with that, as you say at the end of your piece today, with those kinds of risks, parties will often do what they can to avoid trial. What I assume you mean by somehow settling or reaching some sort of compromise, what would be a realistic settlement that would preserve baseball's rights, but not actually, I guess, change anything? I don't know. I mean, I just, you know, I don't know. I really haven't, I really haven't given that a lot of thought. It would certainly,

it would certainly take, you know, a fair bit of, you know, creative thinking and lawyering to come up with something that, you know, was a fair resolution of the matter absent trial. Now, you know, the case was brought, it's not, it's not a, I don't know if it's brought as a fugitive class action, and I don't think it's a class action, and it's just brought by kind of enough consumers in enough markets who, you know, try to either have extra innings or have MLB TV or, you know, live in a place where their options are, you know, limited. I know there was some skirmishing about kind of who, you know, had the right set of facts in order to be a plaintiff in that lawsuit. But no, there would need to be, you know, you know, a lot of creative thinking about

how they could settle that in a way that would be satisfactory, not just to the plaintiffs, you know, but to the, you know, to the lawyers and, you know, and also be satisfactory to Major League Baseball. Because, I mean, I think it's fair to say, I mean, you know, what that issue isn't so much, I mean, there's a principled issue, right? I mean, these plaintiffs are suing in part because, you know, yes, they were damaged, but obviously they're trying to bring the whole system down. So, you know, what that would look like, I don't really know.

I wonder if the plaintiffs could be bought off with, like, a signed bat. Like when you catch the 500th home run by Albert Pujols and he gives you a bat. Well, I mean, sadly, you know. That was a joke, Wendy. No, I don't mean that. Let me just say that. You know, sadly, a lot of the cases that start out looking like they're going to kind of rock the world, you know, end up with, you know, the plaintiffs, you know, the plaintiffs could end up with something like, you know, 10 free years of extra innings or a lifetime of, you know,

free extra innings for MLB TV, you know, which might satisfy them, but obviously, you know, would avoid many, many, many of the larger questions. And whether or not a judge would approve, you know, a settlement, you know, of that nature at this juncture, you know, after the court has kind of seen at least a lot of the evidence suggesting that, you know, there may seriously be an antitrust violation here. a lot of the evidence suggesting that, you know, there may seriously be an antitrust violation here. So it's very, I mean, I was surprised at how strong the plaintiff's showing was. I was not optimistic about this case kind of in the early stages. And I was kind of, I was surprised at what a strong showing they made for kind of an alternative world, you know, without exclusive territories and how that might benefit consumers. So, you know, we'll see. I mean, the judge overseeing the case, you know, she's been on the bench a really long time.

She's super smart. She's well respected. I mean, obviously, whatever happens, if it doesn't settle, there'll be appeals and appeals. And, you know, who knows? I mean, the case could go on for so long and appeals could go on for so long that technology could eventually kind of, you know, catch up and kind of come up with a solution on its own. But we'll see. It's a big deal. own um but we'll see it's a big deal one thing i learned not long ago is that you actually can get mlb tv without blackouts uh like you can't you and i can't but teams have it team employees have it so like if you're a yankees employee your mlb tv is not blacked out uh from yankees games which

just goes to you know it would be really awful and dispiriting if the plaintiffs in this case won and all they won was an unblacked out MLB TV. Right. Well, I mean, every time I write about this at Fangraph, there's tens of hundreds of comments, you know, with people with all sorts of solutions people have used to, you know, mask their ISP, you know, oh, it's so easy, you just do this, you get this thing that makes your ISP think that it's in, you know, some other place so that you're not blocked out of your local game. I mean, you know, I mean, there are lots of ways people have learned to kind of get, get around this. I mean, there's also, you know, the question of why haven't the regional sports networks

figured out how to just stream their own, you know, so, okay, I can't watch the Giants on MLB TV when I'm at home. I mean, I'm not in my house where my TV is, but I'm out somewhere in the Bay Area and I can't watch it on my iPad or whatever because I'm in the local area. But why can't I just pay an extra couple of dollars, whatever, to just stream Comcast Sportsnet? Oh, because they're not allowed to. Right.

No. Well, it's not entirely clear what they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do. Right. I mean, yes. MLB supposedly. Yes. MLB. But why why why can't mlb just i mean why can't mlb just work that out right oh well right they could but so i i tried reading the the case that you linked to um and per that specific question i'm sure they could work that out. But as of now, the RSN has no ability to offer a streaming game.

That goes anything out of market, or I guess I suppose in market, goes straight to MLB, and that's in their control. And just for what you were saying before, I wanted to make it clear since I had it in front of me. for what you were saying before, I wanted to make it clear since I had it in front of me, it is a class action suit, although it looks like three people who were part of the original suits were dismissed in terms of plaintiffs. But I wanted to ask, I guess, basically what Sam said about an unblacked out MLB TV is if they, essentially, if they settled and said we're going to make MLB TV available in in market even so I can watch the Nationals even though I live in DC um is that the type of agree to me that seems like the type of agreement that they would reach that doesn't um really change anything in terms of the coverage areas, but does kind of solve the main complaint, which is, you know, people in Iowa can't watch six other teams home games,

or I can't watch Nationals games if I'm not in front of a TV or that type of thing. Is that a type of settlement that would be reasonable in that sense? Well, that might be something that ultimately Major League Baseball might be willing, and I have no idea, be willing to settle with the plaintiffs. The problem is that all of the agreements that the regional sports networks have assume that they're the exclusive broadcaster in their area. So all of those deals are predicated on the notion that there will be blackouts. So if MLB lifts the blackout restrictions for extra innings at MLB TV, they're going to have lawsuits from every RSA. You know, I mean, I, you know, I obviously I haven't seen any of those contracts, but, but, you know, I mean, MLB could settle out separately and then they'd have their own litigation with the RSNs and the cable companies who, you know, they're all their, I mean,

their deals are predicated on the notion that they're they're exclusive. Right. I mean, why pay one hundred fifty million dollars to the Angels if Angels fans can just get it locally on MLB TV? I mean, so that that set of the economic kind of system, you know, would then be at issue. Right. And I suppose that is what's at stake kind of in this in general, right? I mean, this is, that's what's at stake if the case succeed, if the plaintiffs succeed, is that all the RSN agreements would be nullified, I guess? They would have to resolve those in some capacity. And I know it does seem like an uphill battle, but that they won in summary judgment is a really big,

or I guess not that they won, but that the move-ins in this case did not win in summary judgment is a fairly large step in the plaintiff's favor. Is that correct? Yes. I mean, that's what I, that's what I said in there. And I said it several times on the, on, on the podcast. I mean, it's, it's a really big deal. Um, and it's a big deal because as we've just been discussing for the

last 10 minutes, I mean, there's no obvious, there's no obvious kind of buy-off of one, you know, one set of parties or one, one you know resolution involving one set of parties that doesn't open up a can of worms with the other parties which is why the plaintiffs were very smart to sue not just major league baseball but the regional sports networks and the cable companies i mean it's it's the entire system that's at risk. Now, let me just say, you know, courts don't often prescribe. It's one thing if a jury were to find based on, you know, evidence presented to it that the system in place. I mean, then a jury can decide on damages. And those damages are typically triple under the antitrust statute. And then there are certain things that the federal antitrust law gives authority for courts to enter injunctions, which comes from the word enjoin, which often means to stop someone from doing something, but often can often compel people also to do things. And we saw this

a few days ago in the O'Bannon case, which was the challenge to kind of, you know, the student athlete amateurism set of principles of the NCAA and the federal district judge there, Claudia Wilk, I mean, she issued an injunction at the request of the plaintiffs that was not, not just that said, these rules violate the antitrust laws, but here's the remedy, here's what you have to do. And, you know, that will get appealed and whatnot. So kind of what Judge Scheinlin, you know, might be asked to do by the plaintiffs following a trial in terms of the remedy and how that would be, you know, carried out. You know, I mean, there's just so much that has to happen between now and then, but it is, it's a big deal. It's a big deal for MLB and the RSNs to have to

gear up for a trial and to have to, you know, kind of put their entire, you know, business relationship and the economic structure of this whole thing through, you know, a public trial. It's a big, it's a big deal, not just because all this stuff would be disclosed, and it would be closely watched, and the finances would become available, and people would be able to see that, but because, because the remedies that are available to the judge, you know, are pretty broad. And, you know, there's risk that the whole structure, you know, will be found in violation of the antitrust law. So, I mean, you know, people thought it was impossible when the courts broke up, you know, Ma Bell, I mean, you know, the antitrust law is an incredibly powerful thing.

Plaintiffs don't often succeed in jury trials. I mean, I think we shouldn't suggest that the plaintiff is a slam dunk, but it is a big deal. It's a very big deal. Well, to me, it's a pretty big deal that I now know that it is actually pronounced carriage, just like the moving vehicle. All my life, I've thought that's probably pronounced carriage, even though it's spelled exactly the same way. So thank you, Wendy, for making sure I don't embarrass myself on that, as well as for everything else. Thank you for walking us through all these things. There's much more that you've written about. We didn't get to Nationals, Orioles, but we probably don't need to at this point. And in the meantime, you'll probably write about it sometime soon, and then we can just read that. So thank you for coming on.

Thank you, Craig, for co-hosting with me. And please, everybody, support our sponsor. Go to Baseball Reference and subscribe to the Play Index. It's only $30 if you use the coupon code BP, and you will never regret it. We'll be back tomorrow, presumably with Ben, with Email Wednesday. So send emails to podcast at baseballperspectives.com. All right. Well, this is normally the part where Ben would sneak in some sort of blooper or surprising twist.