For 2020, MLB Should Consider Dropping TV Blackout Policy

In the crazy, turbulent, and unpredictable time of the coronavirus pandemic, plans are being made to try to return society to some sense of normalcy. The mere fact that life in the transition-to-post-pandemic world is certain to be anything but “normal” will play itself out across every facet of life, including Major League Baseball.

While the plans are ever-evolving for MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and the league, real efforts to get some semblance of a season in the books continues to be a serious goal. He also sees live baseball as a way for the country to heal itself, and let us be honest, brings some revenues in.

If or when baseball returns, it will look like no other version we’ve seen. Games will be played with no fans in attendance. There will likely be 7-inning doubleheaders. The use of an automated strike zone in site-neutral locations where players can be tightly monitored and protected from the coronavirus are all on the table.

And that brings us to how games will be broadcast.

If Manfred is sincere in his comments about baseball being a part of the healing process, the league should lift its arcane blackout policy for 2020. Having one in place presents bad optics. Each year, the blackout policy rates as MLB’s top customer service complaint. And in the pandemic world where so many are sacrificing at home, being jilted with a game being blacked out when you’re stuck at home would it really be something that heals?

For the uninitiated, the league’s broadcast blackout territories are arbitrary and create headaches for fans. Unlike other sports that use blackouts to drive fans to games, in many cases across the country, territories can be so far afield as to make blackouts as a means to get fans to games, ridiculous. As an example, just how realistic is it for someone living in Butte, Montana to suddenly get in the car and drive to Seattle to watch a Mariners game? And to add, there are locations, such as Las Vegas, where six teams (Dodgers, Angels, Padres, Diamondbacks, Giants, and Athletics) all have overlapping territories. Throw in that national broadcasts have exclusivity windows where any other games are kept out of reach by fans uninterested in what ESPN, FOX, or Turner is showing, and it adds up to headaches for consumers.

And if the league is hosting games in site-neutral locations such as in Arizona == or a combination of Arizona, Florida, and Texas — then almost all the broadcast territories become moot.

The league will say that in a year when they will lose billions of dollars, lifting the broadcast territories will come at a cost. But then the networks that host the games will almost certainly have lower costs to air games.

If the return of baseball sees the minimal number of players and personnel, so too will broadcast teams. Except for national broadcasts, it seems wise to have a central camera crew that then sends the feeds back to the regional sports networks where those directing and calling the game can do so safely. If this “central feed” works for the Olympics, so too would it for the regional sports networks. Given that as many as four games a day could be played at one of the neutral sites, why the need for the additional broadcast personnel? Less personnel, less cost.

 Could this happen? Could blackouts be lifted, if only for baseball’s truncated 2020 season? In speaking with a league official who spoke anonymously due to ongoing planning, how broadcasts might be treated as it pertains to blackouts have not been discussed. For the good of the fans who have been starved for live sporting content, let us hope MLB doesn’t limit accessibility on television.