Cord cutters and Roku owners looking to subscribe to their favorite team and favorite team only are a little closer to that reality according to an article by Fangraphs.
The article cites a lawsuit Garber v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball as the catalyst for this change. As many Major League Baseball fans know, MLB currently only offers an all in package of every MLB team (excluding in market teams). In the suit MLB is being challenged for it’s broadcasting practices.
The league in response has stated, “beginning next season MLB will make single-team, out-of-market streams available for purchase (alongside the out-of-market package) on MLB.TV.”
While out of market team packages will not do you any good if you live in market, there are thousands of home team fans that have moved to another part of the country that this will be great for.
The filing also doesn’t mention pricing, but one would assume it will be a lot cheaper than the $130 all in package currently available.
The last big step left for cord cutting MLB fans is to get MLB to offer in market games with no cable or satellite authentication. I think MLB is leaving a lot of money on the table by not doing so. I think a lot of die hard fans such as myself would pay a premium in season to watch every game of my local team on the Roku. Let’s say I had to pay $20 a month for the New York Yankees or Cincinnati Reds, it would still be cheaper than subscribing to a bundle of cable channels I don’t want just to watch them.
MLB may not be there this year, but if they haven’t went to full on OTT streaming by 2019 I would be surprised.
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What do you think, will MLB switch to full in market, no authentication streaming in the near future? Comment below.
