In the last fifteen years, baseball has survived one cancelled World Series, one All-Star Game tie and its ridiculous aftermath, and a huge steroid scandal that was as much the fault of the baseball establishment as it was the players. Somehow, the game has survived and prospered through it all. Now, Commissioner Bud Selig and his loyal band of dum-dums are threatening to really hurt the game.
The MLB Extra Innings Package
In a saga that has been going on for months now, the MLB Extra Innings package, which provides viewers with access to out-of-area baseball games, still doesn't have a home. For the past few years, MLB Extra Innings has been the exclusive property of a consortium of cable television systems known as inDemand. So, if a fan had cable TV connection, he or she got the games for a set price for the season. The package usually shows 10 to 12 games a day from April through October. If the fan had satellite TV connection, however, she still had the option of seeing many of her favorite team's games by signing up for their local broadcast channel on her satellite system. (The fan could, for example, could get her team's games by signing up for the Yankees YES Network, Chicago's WGN network, or Boston's NESN),
So, everything was pretty good for the fans, right? Although they had to pay (about $180 for the season), the MLB Extra Innings package was a good bargain for those who lived outside of the area code of their favorite ballclubs.
DirecTV Tries to Buy the MLB Extra Innings Package
But all of that could soon change. This off-season, baseball began negotiating with DirecTV for exclusive rights to the MLB Extra Innings package. In other words, if DirecTV offered enough cash, the Commissioner would allow satellite television to be the only source for the MLB Extra Innings package. Folks who have purchased the package from their cable systems for years could be left out in the cold. Cable TV viewers began freaking out; it looked like they had to get a satellite dish or they would be shut out completely from the MLB Extra Innings.
Early on the morning of March 8, 2007, DirecTV submitted an offer to carry Extra Innings for $700 million for the next seven baseball seasons. Commissioner Bud Selig then gave InDemand until March 31, 2007 to match the DirecTV offer.
On the morning of March 21, 2007, InDemand released a satement that it had matched the Satllite offer, and thus would continue to carry MLB Extra Innings.
But later that afternoon, MLB President Bob DuPuy came out and said that InDemand's offer did not meet key provisions of the DirecTV deal. He reiterated that InDemand still had until March 31 to match the cable offer, point for point.
But inDemand never came back with an acceptable bid to match DirecTV's offer, so everyone who watched Extra Innings on cable is now out in the cold. The options left for such fans is to get DirecTV satellite service, watch ganes on your computer at MLB.com or miss the season altogether.
