Extra Innings Exclusively on DirecTV

[Guest ScarletKnight41]

Do they have a less swanky e-mail addy?

[Frayed Knot]

This all reminds me of the time (early '90s?) when MLB sold their entire network package ('Game of the Week' plus ASG & all post-season) to CBS, breaking the long-running streak of 'GotW' on NBC and a split ABC/NBC post-season.
The change in the network wasn't a bad thing neccesarily except that CBS wasn't really interested in baseball - esp reg season baseball. They just bought the entire deal in order to gain exclusivity in the post-season which they used to plug the hell out of their new fall prime-time schedule. Meanwhile, the GotW sked got severely cut back and erratic as CBS put on a Saturday game seemingly whenever they felt like it, skipping weeks at a time during certain stretches. The joke at the time was that it went from 'Game of the Week' to 'Game of the Once-in-a-While'

IOW, what MLB did back then - just like now - was to opt for the bigger pile of money that an exclusivity deal brings while bringing fewer games to the public.
Those intent on writing letters might want to remind Bud & co of how THAT deal worked out for them.

[Sandgnat]

KC wrote: I think it's total bullshit what they do (in case my profanity laden tirade this morning didn't make that clear). It's a silly little microcosm of an example, but here's two people in Yance and Mrs. Field's who love baseball (run state of the art fan site/plan vacations around which ballpark they haven't visited yet) and they are totally dissed by the very product they adore. I'm writing Sealeg a letter tommorow. I'm shouting at the wind, but that's the way I look at it.

Of course, they could just get Direct TV.

[metsmarathon]

i would tend to think that they make less money by making the deal exclusive to one provider, as compared to all the money they could make by allowing anybody to pay for it irrespective of their cable or satellite system.

and it would be better for building and maintaining a strong fan base.

[Frayed Knot]

I suspect that it's partly - if not largely - a way to gain a foothold for their MLB channel as an agreement to carry the new channel whenever it launches is most likely linked as part of the deal. It'll save them any possible embarrasment if they were to lauch a channel only to either have everyone yawn, or, worse yet, not get their price.

Again, it's the same route the NFL took. Most of the big cable providers are ignoring the NFL channel both because they won't take it unless they can get the more attractive 'Sunday Ticket' package as well, and that the channel itself - with 24/7 minutae in addition to a handful of out of town games - just isn't all that interesting as a stand-alone.

[Frayed Knot]

="metsmarathon"]i would tend to think that they make less money by making the deal exclusive to one provider, as compared to all the money they could make by allowing anybody to pay for it irrespective of their cable or satellite system.

From Baseball Prospectus:
DirecTV is paying a whopping $100 million a year over seven years for these rights. Based on the information in the Sports Business Journal, that represents a five-fold increase over what inDemand was paying for the rights to EI. This is a considerable boost to MLB’s bottom line, although the marginal gain isn’t necessarily over the $20 million or so they were making under the previous deal, but over the reported $70 million a year SBJ claims inDemand offered.

]and it would be better for building and maintaining a strong fan base.

Yeah, but what's that compared to a $1mil/team/yr increase in revenue?

[Guest KC]

I ain't going to keep harping on this, but I just feel like it's always something
with MLB that pisses me off. Maybe I like being pissed off, but I ain't getting
no DirectTV when the digital cable entering my living room is working just fine
so I'm a loser in this deal -- I watch too much baseball anyways, maybe I'll
start stamp collecting or raise goats.

[Guest KC]

And just one kinda related point. There are by my count four ways for me to
get tv service now. We got FIOS, digital cable, and two satellite providers.
The argument has always been that everyone should have a way to provide
service and get a piece of the pie and that will ultimately be best for consumers
because of competition.

The cost of all this crap has never been more ridiculous, certain things are only
available here and some there and if they shell out nine figure payments to get
some exclusivity the price and competition factor goes out the window because
the have to recoup their over-priced investment.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

I'm thinking I might get the cheapest DirecTV package and keep my digital cable as well. Not the cheapest option, but given all the issues I've been hearing and reading about concerning DirecTV, especially regarding weather and TiVo, it's probably better than putting all of my television eggs in one basket.

So if I do this, and I'm not sure I will, Extra Innings would end up costing me about $400 or $500 per year instead of $150. I don't like that at all, but the additional $350 or so is about the price of two nights in a nice hotel. You could argue that getting to watch about 100 to 120 Mets games over six months has more value than a comfy mattres (I left off the last S for savings) for two nights.

Again, if I was in New York, and able to get SNY, I'd tell MLB and DirecTV to go to hell. Actually, if I was in New York I wouldn't have subscribed to Extra Innings in the first place, since I don't care about watching any of the other 29 teams.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

From Sports Illustrated:

="John Donovan"] MLB's brushback pitch Deal with DirecTV could leave most fans out in cold Posted: Tuesday January 23, 2007 2:42PM; Updated: Tuesday January 23, 2007 2:55PM The last place that any baseball fan ever wants to be is between team owners and a dollar bill. It's like stepping between Pete Rose and Ray Fosse, circa 1970. Or between Jose Canseco and his syringe sometime in the '90s. If it takes bowling over fans to get to that buck -- or giving them a nice, quick shot in the butt to get them out of the way -- that's exactly what baseball owners are going to do. It's not even a contest. Major League Baseball is in the process of negotiating exclusive rights to its Extra Innings package of out-of-market games to satellite giant DirecTV, and that means a lot of fans are about to get absolutely crushed into the dirt. The Extra Innings package, for the hundreds of thousands of fans who have shelled out the $170 or so for it already know, is a seamhead's dream: almost unlimited baseball broadcast by home-team announcers for six months. Up to 60 regular-season games a week. Say you're a transplanted Washingtonian living in Miami and you want to see your hometown Mariners every night. You can do it with Extra Innings. Say you just want to spend a few evenings a week poring over six or seven games between teams you'd rarely get to see otherwise. Go for it. You can hear Jerry Remy do the Red Sox on NESN, pop over to take in a little Hawk Harrelson with the White Sox (if you can take him) and finish up with Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow calling a Giants game -- all in one dizzying, bleary-eyed evening. Then you can do it again the next night. But now, if this deal between MLB and DirecTV goes through as expected, you won't be able to get Extra Innings through your local cable TV outfit. Or through Dish Network, either. If you want the Extra Innings package, starting with the 2007 season, you'll have to be a DirecTV subscriber. No exceptions. That, as I understand the concept, is the whole "exclusive rights" thing. (DirecTV, we should point out, is becoming the runaway leader of sports programming among satellite providers. The company already has exclusive rights to NFL out-of-market games via its Sunday Ticket package. It just announced exclusive rights to Mega March Madness for the NCAA basketball tournament. DirecTV is becoming the ESPN of the shiny dish set.) If it so happens that you can't get DirectTV, or you don't want to -- say, you live in an apartment complex that doesn't allow satellite dishes, or you're in a place where a dish can't get a clear shot at a satellite, or satellites are verboten by your homeowners association, or you just don't like their looks or the fact that the reception can get a little fuzzy in the worst of weather -- well, you're pretty much out of luck. Move over, pal, you're about to get posterized for posterity. You're going to be stuck with whoever broadcasts your local team, the Fox national game of the week and whatever national games ESPN decides to put on twice a week. There is another option, of course, which not so coincidentally falls rather nicely into baseball's money-hungry ways. If this deal goes through, and DirecTV isn't an option, you could always go to MLB.TV, Major League Baseball's Internet-based version of Extra Innings. You have to have a broadband hookup, of course, and the computer screen is super wimpy compared to that 42-inch living room screen of yours. The technology isn't flawless, by any means. But it's there, for those who get shut out by the DirecTV deal, at about $100 a season. It's hard to say exactly how many people this new MLB-DirecTV hookup is going to affect because nobody wants to talk much about something still in the works. According to The Sports Business Journal, Extra Innings pulled in about 750,000 subscribers last year through sales on Dish Network, DirecTV and cable systems throughout the U.S. With two-thirds of that equation potentially gone -- including, we'd have to assume, the largest part, cable TV -- we could have, maybe, as many as a half-million die-hard baseball fans scrambling around. It's not a pretty proposition. Many of those can, and probably will, switch to DirecTV. But many, also, would be left out or left to MLB.TV. The reason MLB is forsaking that many fans shouldn't surprise anyone. DirecTV, according to a report in the New York Times, will fork over $700 million for seven years for the exclusive rights to carry Extra Innings. So MLB is faced with this simple decision: $700 million or a few thousand upset seamheads. It's no contest. It's Rose against Fosse. Business-wise, short-term, you can see baseball's side in this, if you forget about the fans. A thirtieth of a $700 million deal will pay a good-sized piece of any team's over-inflated payroll. And a lot of the money that baseball sees from the DirecTV deal could go toward seeding the game's next big money-making venture, the MLB Channel, coming to a television near you around the 2009 season. But the shame -- and isn't this always the problem? -- is that it's the fans who ultimately end up taking it in the Canseco once again. The deal with DirecTV will make it more difficult for many baseball fans to get what they want, how they want. It's really as simple as that. And that's no way to treat the customer.

[Guest KC]

Draggin' Rose and Canseco and steroids in makes the piece kinda, no very,
silly to me. There are a half dozen better writers on this forum who should
be working for SI and wouldn't stoop that nonsesnse.

I don't see why they can't charge $250 million to three carriers and make
everyone happy instead of throwing a wrench into what is otherwise a pretty
lucrative package already if they have so many happy subscribers.

[Guest Edgy DC]

True that, but many a good writer gets stuck for a lead and uses a tortured metaphor like that.

[Guest ScarletKnight41]

I'm with Kase on this one. The facts of this situation are offensive enough. Why divert attention away from that with unrelated matters?

[metsmarathon]

take it in the canseco. get it? 'cause canseco's an ass! ha!

[Guest KC]

SK: >>>I'm with Kase on this one.<<<

First time this year ... things are looking up lol

[Guest ScarletKnight41]

I'm sure there was another time a week or two ago.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I'm not saying Kase is wrong, I'm sympathizing with a bad writing job.

[Guest ScarletKnight41]

The hell with bad writers!

[Guest Edgy DC]

Um, yeah!

[Guest cooby]

Yancy Street Gang wrote: I'm thinking I might get the cheapest DirecTV package and keep my digital cable as well. Not the cheapest option, but given all the issues I've been hearing and reading about concerning DirecTV, especially regarding weather and TiVo, it's probably better than putting all of my television eggs in one basket. So if I do this, and I'm not sure I will, Extra Innings would end up costing me about $400 or $500 per year instead of $150. I don't like that at all, but the additional $350 or so is about the price of two nights in a nice hotel. You could argue that getting to watch about 100 to 120 Mets games over six months has more value than a comfy mattres (I left off the last S for savings) for two nights. Again, if I was in New York, and able to get SNY, I'd tell MLB and DirecTV to go to hell. Actually, if I was in New York I wouldn't have subscribed to Extra Innings in the first place, since I don't care about watching any of the other 29 teams.

Yancy, I don't think this is going to happen until 2009, I wouldn't do anything yet.
Unless I'm reading everything wrong.

[Frayed Knot]

The exclusive deal with DirecTV would start with the '07 season.
It's the MLB channel which is sked for '09

[Guest cooby]

Ah...I went back and reread that and still didn't catch that, thank you, Frayed Knot. Now I see Yancy's dilemma.

[Sandgnat]

I can't comment about the Tivo issue since I know nothing about it. I can tell you that you can get a HD receiver with DVR from DirecTV and everyone I know who has that loves it.

Originally, I switched from cable (Comcast in NJ) to DirecTV just for the NFL Sunday ticket and the college football package (lived with two other guys, we had 6 TV's and a serious gambling problem). I have been a DirecTV customer for about 6 years now and have no complaints at all. I actually couldn't imagine going back to cable.

I regards to the weather issue, I think some of the concerns are way overblown. I live in Savannah where we have regular, daily downpours in the summer and my TV never goes out. It takes monsoon-like conditions for it to lose the signal. Yancy, if you were going to move to DirecTV, I don't think keeping cable would be necessary. It takes one hell of a storm to lose the signal, and the signal is not lost for very long if it does go out. Incidently, the national average for outages for cable are 3-5% per year, while DirecTV is at 1%.

What I don't understand is why MLB would want to limit thier audience for thier product. I understand that $ 700 million is a lot more then $ 70 million, but what about the economic effect of not showing your product to as many people? Cable, DirecTV and Dish Network have a combined 98 million subscribers. DirecTV is only 15 million of that total. Sure, some people will move to DirecTV to continue to receive the extra innings package, but you can't expect all 83 million to so you lose that much exposure of your product.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

No new developments on this story. There's been quite a backlash from the fans, but no indication that the groundswell of anger and dismay will do anything to derail the deal.

[Guest silverdsl]

Considering how much money is involved in this deal, I think that will probably outweigh the complaints from the fans.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

I'm sure.

Some articles, though, are pointing out that MLB would make more money selling to InDemand and to DirecTV. The combined income from the two sources could easily add up to more than the exclusive amount from DirecTV alone.

[Frayed Knot]

Except that a lot of what this is about is an apparent quid pro quo with DirecTV to save a spot for the MLB channel when it launches. The cable systems, who have managed to resist putting the NFL & NBA channels on their main tier quite easily, wouldn't be expected to lay down the red carpet when baseball comes knocking with their new toy either.

The NOT suprising part in all this that (as usual) baseball is getting killed in the media for considering doing what football has been doing all along; ie, giving DirecTV an exclusive on the out-of-town package while trying to blame cable companies for "depriving" customers of the NFL channel. The NFL, of course, comes off critisism-free in the whole deal.
Now I suppose one could argue that MLB deserves worse as it initially sold their package to both cable & satellite and then pulled back, but I'm not sure that that's neccesarily worse than never offering it to one segment from the beginning.

[Guest ABG]

The relevant guy to email apparently is Bob Bowman: Bob.Bowman@mlb.com

Posted elsewhere, have at him.

[soupcan]

Just so happens that I know Mr. Bowman.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

Then introduce him to Billy Squier, ya Starfucker.