Apple makes deal to stream Friday night baseball games

[jsnpritchett]

(On a side note, I still think it's absurd that the only [legitimate...] ways for someone in Southern California to stream Angels games are to subscribe to cable or DirecTV/DirecTV Stream.  I wanted to ditch Spectrum for YouTube TV, but now I'm holding off until a) I see if the baseball season actually starts sometime soon, and b) if Bally Sports manages to launch their direct-to-consumer subscription for streaming baseball games (I still have my doubts)).

[jsnpritchett]

 

[Lazorko Saves]

Great, more games to be blacked out.  Just what I wanted.

[Lou]

And the owners continue to make more money.

Well done.

[Jason]

Let's make sure there will actually be baseball before we get annoyed by this 

[Stradling]

So does this mean they will have a “Friday Night Game of the Week”?  Or are we looking at the only way to watch Friday Night baseball is to have an Apple Account? 

[Lou]

7 minutes ago, Stradling said:

So does this mean they will have a “Friday Night Game of the Week”?  Or are we looking at the only way to watch Friday Night baseball is to have an Apple Account? 

Someone didn't read the article.

Spoiler

It's Strad 

 

[Make Angels Great Again]

39 minutes ago, Stradling said:

So does this mean they will have a “Friday Night Game of the Week”?  Or are we looking at the only way to watch Friday Night baseball is to have an Apple Account? 

Apple has exclusive rights to two games per week to stream on Friday. So yeah, if you want to watch that game you'll need a sub to Apple TV+

 

I literally don't know anyone who gives a shit about apple tv+ nor has a sub to it. I don't even know how much it costs.

[Justin]

Can it be worse than baseball on Facebook?

(Probably.)

[jsnpritchett]

1 hour ago, Lazorko Saves said:

Great, more games to be blacked out.  Just what I wanted.

Nope.  From the second article:

"Fans will be able to watch marquee games on Friday nights, free from local broadcast restrictions..."

[Make Angels Great Again]

Just looked it up. $5 a month, so at least its cheap. Still will probably only sub for the month(s) an Angels game is on then cancel. lol.

[jsnpritchett]

Just now, Make Angels Great Again said:

Apple has exclusive rights to two games per week to stream on Friday. So yeah, if you want to watch that game you'll need a sub to Apple TV+

 

I literally don't know anyone who gives a shit about apple tv+ nor has a sub to it. I don't even know how much it costs.

I have a subscription.  It's only $4.99/month.  If you buy basically any new Apple product, you generally get it free for 12 months (sometimes more).

[Lazorko Saves]

6 minutes ago, jsnpritchett said:

Nope.  From the second article:

"Fans will be able to watch marquee games on Friday nights, free from local broadcast restrictions..."

No.  That is only one of the forms of blackout.

The games will not be available on mlb.tv live.  They will be Apple+ exclusives.  Just like the Saturday Fox games.

That is one of the other forms of blackout for mlb.tv subscribers.

[jsnpritchett]

2 minutes ago, Lazorko Saves said:

No.  That is only one of the forms of blackout.

The games will not be available on mlb.tv live.  They will be Apple+ exclusives.  Just like the Saturday Fox games.

That is one of the other forms of blackout for mlb.tv subscribers.

I didn't have the full context of what you meant from your first post.

[Hubs]

32 minutes ago, Make Angels Great Again said:

Apple has exclusive rights to two games per week to stream on Friday. So yeah, if you want to watch that game you'll need a sub to Apple TV+

 

I literally don't know anyone who gives a shit about apple tv+ nor has a sub to it. I don't even know how much it costs.

It's not two Angels games, it's literally two of the 15 games. So a 13% chance it's an Angels game.

*27? = Maybe 4-5 Friday games will be not broadcast.

Not a big loss. I remember when they used to only broadcast 80-85 Angels games period.

[Tank]

13 minutes ago, Hubs said:

Not a big loss. I remember when they used to only broadcast 80-85 Angels games period.

every friday night and every sunday, and only road games when i was a kid. it was unusual to get a weeknight game for a while. we saw maybe 40 games a year when i was but a young lad.

[Hubs]

I have an apple+ subscription, they have some good shows. And are clearly trying to add programming. I was wondering how to get streaming for Angels games, because I sold my house and don't anticipate getting cable for the next place. 

Guess I'm still looking at basic cable or a Directv's streaming package.

[jsnpritchett]

Just now, Hubs said:

I have an apple+ subscription, they have some good shows. And are clearly trying to add programming. I was wondering how to get streaming for Angels games, because I sold my house and don't anticipate getting cable for the next place. 

Guess I'm still looking at basic cable or a Directv's streaming package.

Yep.  Only other way is going setting up a VPN so you can access games through MLB.tv. 

[Hubs]

Just now, jsnpritchett said:

Yep.  Only other way is going setting up a VPN so you can access games through MLB.tv. 

I assumed you could buy the MLB package and if you lived in your local market, you could watch. It's dumb they make this so complicated. It's like the NFL does with Sunday Ticket. Just charge me a fee, like the same as a PPV movie or whatever, for every 49ers game. I'd pay $150 or so a year just to watch the Niners. That's more than the $5 per month FSW gets from my subscriber package to Angels games, and MLBTV is currently around the same for 6 months, no?

[jsnpritchett]

2 minutes ago, Hubs said:

I assumed you could buy the MLB package and if you lived in your local market, you could watch. It's dumb they make this so complicated. It's like the NFL does with Sunday Ticket. Just charge me a fee, like the same as a PPV movie or whatever, for every 49ers game. I'd pay $150 or so a year just to watch the Niners. That's more than the $5 per month FSW gets from my subscriber package to Angels games, and MLBTV is currently around the same for 6 months, no?

I think MLB.tv is around $130 for a full season subscription, maybe?  And $25/month.  But, yeah, streaming rights for most sports--but especially baseball--are convoluted, mainly because they were an afterthought in deals made several years ago that still haven't expired.  They're now a patchwork of new deals that replaced expiring ones and lingering older deals that are restrictive/confusing.

Within a few years, I fully expect that we'll have the ability to do PPV to stream individual games and/or pay for a "season package" of just a single team's games.  Bally Sports was allegedly working on a direct-to-consumer subscription plan that would allow fans to pay them a fee for the ability to stream team games directly from their Bally Sports app, even if you don't have a cable subscription--but I haven't seen anything final on that yet.

[Lou]

Enjoy.

 

https://thestreamable.com/news/sinclairs-bally-sports-app-plans-has-two-major-flaws

[greginpsca]

MLB is doing a great job of chasing away viewers.

[Inside Pitch]

2 hours ago, Stradling said:

So does this mean they will have a “Friday Night Game of the Week”?  Or are we looking at the only way to watch Friday Night baseball is to have an Apple Account? 

Yes, if you pay for MLBtv.   Locals are fine.

[jsnpritchett]

Angels are part of the Apple Friday night double-header three times in the first 12 weeks:

https://www.mlb.com/angels/news/mlb-apple-tv-friday-night-schedule

 

[Blarg]

MLB has decided that fucking with fans and making their team unwatchable without having to pay for multiple outlets is the way to create customer loyalty. At this point I hope they go bankrupt and both leagues collapse.