That may be true. I meant that it isn't forward thinking to require viewers to have a cable subscription to watch, even if it means more revenue in the short term.
Even for me as a lifelong baseball fan, I've largely stopped watching games. By the time they do away with the restrictions, will I even bother? Who knows.
But I am a little biased and may be overestimating the impact of cord cutting among millennials
If it means more revenue in the short term, and they switch strategies at the point when it no long means more revenue, which they may well do, they are still being forward-thinking. What you are saying is you don't like blackouts and you'd like there to be some reason that MLB is stupid for having them.
You're probably right. MLB has been around a long time, and somehow they still maintain an antitrust exemption, so they probably know what they're doing.
Because "within minutes" isn't the same thing as "concurrently with". There are pirates who attempt to provide that, but generally fail in terms of reliability, quality, etc.
There is, at least for the NHL. It's still not completely reliable but I can watch every game of the regular season and playoffs much easier than using gamecenter (and cheaper). The blackouts are really bad for the NHL. When I lived in Canada, every game for every team was watchable with no blackouts. In the bay area? I can't watch any of the Canadian teams even though they're certainly not in the same market, along with Nashville, New York, St Louis, basically all of them and of course San Jose, LA, Anaheim.
It's useless. So the free streams that are available are amazing.
Even for me as a lifelong baseball fan, I've largely stopped watching games. By the time they do away with the restrictions, will I even bother? Who knows.
But I am a little biased and may be overestimating the impact of cord cutting among millennials