Major League Baseball has awarded an exclusive contract with DirecTV (see press release) with a package they call MLB Extra Innings
Some have objected to this seeming-monopoly, except one of the suits invested in the deal who responded to questions about consumer choice by saying (essentially) “You want choice? Of course you have choice!” And here’s how that choice looks.
DuPuy said that fans who have gotten the out-of-town games on other providers will still have the option of receiving them this year: by switching to DirecTV or subscribing to MLB.TV to watch the games on the Internet. “This is not a matter of fans being unable to view Major League Baseball’s out-of-market games,” he said. “It is a matter of not being able to watch those games on a particular system.”
For the curious MLB.TV will cost you $15/month or $90/year (note: all costs rounded to the nearest dollar). That’s on top of your high speed internet connection (which I can’t get at home).
If you sign up before April 15th, the DirecTV package will cost you $160 (or 4 payments of $40). After that it goes up another $40 to $200.
The 2007 DirecTV schedule for MLB Extra Innings as of today, March 30th, 2007, has a complete schedule…
…for April’s games.
The other months (May, June, July, August, September, and October) are currently listed as
There are no games listed in the current time period yet. Please check back later.
So let’s recap.
DirecTV has an exclusive TV contract with Major League Baseball.
DirecTV offers one package to people wanting “out of market” games for one price.
On the last business day before the season opener, DirecTV can’t tell me what I’m signing up for.
When I objected to this to DirecTV support, they told me that if the schedule isn’t there, then they haven’t gotten it from the league.
Haven’t gotten it from the league? They worked out a multimillion dollar multi-year agreement, but can’t get a list of what games are available this season?
Hrm, remind me again, who is getting served by this deal?
My thinking is simple: if you can only give me 1/7th of the schedule, let me pay 1/7th of the fee, for the month of April. When you put up the schedules for the rest of the months, then I can decide whether or not to continue paying.
But asking for 100% of the fee when they are giving me 14% of the terms of the contract?
They responded by telling me that I will get “Up to 60 games a week.” I responded that “Up to 60 games a week” is a meaningless phrase invented by someone in the marketing department. All that means is that they have to provide 60 games one week. Then they have lived up to their end of the agreement, right? I mean “Up To 60” can mean 50… or 40…. or 20… or 10.
To be fair there are 350 games listed for April. However, 330 of those games are irrelevant to me, because what I really want are the Red Sox games.
So why don’t I just subscribe to the package that offers me all of the Red Sox games?
Because there is no such offer. DirecTV offers me one package for one price. Or I could go to the office and watch the games on the DSL connection there. They do claim to support OS X if you use Safari but then warn that:
Mac Safari browser users will experience slowness for portions of the site that utilize plug-in technology such as Windows Media Player or Flash Player. This slowness is not specific to MLB.com but to all websites that use plug-in technologies.
Guess what uses plugins? Yeah, the viewer to watch the games. So they are telling me up-front it will be slow.
Customer choice would be that DishNetwork (for example) has access to those games and might offer more customized packages, and I might be tempted to switch to DishNetwork because of that option. Then DirecTV might offer them as well. And the price might be lower. That’s capitalism. That’s a free market. That’s competition - something we ought to value.
This virtual monopoly between DirecTV/MLB serves DirecTV/MLB and only DirecTV/MLB. It does not serve baseball fans. It does not even serve DirecTV customers, and it gives a big giant middle finger to all the baseball fans who are have cable or DishNetwork.