has several blackout rules. Games are blacked out based on two criteria:
A local broadcaster has priority to televise games of the team in their market over national broadcasters. For example, at one time TBS showed many Atlanta Braves games nationally and internationally in Canada. Fox Sports Net also shows many games in other areas. If the Braves played a team that FSN or another local broadcaster showed, the local station will have the broadcast rights for its own local market, while TBS would have been blacked out in the same market for the duration of the game. A market that has a local team playing in a weekday ESPN or ESPN2 game and is shown on a local station will see ESPNEWS, or, in the past, another game scheduled on ESPN or ESPN2 at the same time, or will be subject to an alternative programming feed. ESPN are allowed up to three "co-exists" per season for each team on Monday nights. ESPN2 does not allow co-exists of Monday night games; they will be blacked out in the home team market. MLB's streaming Internet video service is also subject to the same blackout rules, although in the near-future, MLB is rumored to be looking into the possibility of teams and their local broadcasters cutting deals with cable/satellite providers to permit in-market streaming.
Fox has certain rights for afternoon MLB games on Saturdays, and ESPN has the same rights for night games on Sundays. Broadcasters cannot show games of in-market teams, regardless of whether the game is home or away, if the game of the local team has a certain start time. This, at least theoretically, is to make people watch the out-of-market game on ESPN or Fox. The reasoning is that since people will not be able to watch their favorite team, they may be willing to settle for some baseball, even if it involves teams they are not as excited about. This results in higher ratings for the national broadcaster by pulling baseball fans away from watching their own team. The Braves and the Texas RangersMarlins Park have traditionally been allowed to play Sunday night home games during the summer to avoid the extreme heat often found in their home markets. Otherwise, teams avoid scheduling home games within the broadcast windows of the exclusive network broadcasts. Teams are also able to play makeup games in the same window.
United States
All of the Contiguous United States, except for some small, remote, isolated patches, are within at least one team's blackout territory. Some areas may lie within the territories of two or more. As the accompanying map shows, teams generally have exclusive territorial rights only over their home cities' immediate area, but even then there are exceptions. For example, all of Texas, including the Houston metropolitan area as well as the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, as well as the entire state of Louisiana, is within both the Astros' and Rangers' blackout areas. Outside of the immediate area, several teams may exercise blackout rights within the same territory. The entire state of Iowa, for example, is within the blackout areas of the Cubs, White Sox, Brewers, Twins, Cardinals, and Royals. SouthernNevada likewise lies within six MLB teams' blackout territories. Areas of far western Kansas and the Nebraskapanhandle represent an anomaly; although being geographically closer to Denver than Kansas City, they are included in the blackout territory for the Royals and not the Rockies. This is likely a remnant of pre-1993 territorial exclusions, since the Royals were the only team between Kansas City and California, except for the Astros and Rangers, between 1969 and 1992. A similar anomaly is that the El Paso area in Texas is not within the blackout territory of the Arizona Diamondbacks, despite El Paso being considerably closer to Phoenix than to either Texas-based MLB team. This is also likely a remnant of territorial exclusions predating the D-Backs' 1998 entry into MLB. MLB relies on ZIP code prefixes to determine its blackout areas. For some areas in the West Valley of greater Phoenix, the ZIP code prefix is 853. Because of this, a fan that resides within 10 miles of Chase Field will be blacked out of all online San Diego Padres games. It's likely this is a remnant of the Padres' former blackout territory; prior to the Diamondbacks' arrival, all of Arizona was included in the Padres' blackout territory. Due to the fact that they play in Canada, the Toronto Blue Jays do not have any part of their blackout territory in the United States.
Changes due to 2012 MLB/ESPN deal
A new contract between ESPN and Major League Baseball in 2012 virtually eliminated local blackouts involving the network's Monday and Wednesday night games, allowing ESPN coverage to co-exist with that of the local broadcasters in home markets. The agreement took effect at the start of the season.
Consumer devices that enable television subscribers to transmit their home television feed outside their host area to a remote location over the Internet, a practice called placeshifting, have drawn the ire of MLB. MLB's position is that subscribers who wish to watch MLB telecasts while traveling either settle for the local telecasts available or subscribe to MLB's own broadcasts for an additional fee. Consumer advocates insist the practice is legal, since the remoted content is already purchased and is merely placeshifted by the subscriber; they claim MLB is asking fans to pay twice for the same content. MLB counters that travelers utilizing placeshifting technology are undercutting the blackout rights MLB grants to local and national broadcasters, as well as MLB's own internet service. In 2009, MLB launched MLB Network on basic cable similar to the NFL Network. As part of the new network, MLB has told owners to reduce their blackouts due to outrage amongst fans and letters pouring into MLB's offices. In particular, MLB is looking to address the availability of regional sports networks outside teams' immediate home markets. Ostensibly, if teams/channels are not available in certain locations, teams could lose their claims to such areas and coverage would be replaced by the MLB-controlled Extra Innings service.
Radio blackouts
In MLB, there are no radio blackouts, although ESPN Radio has exclusive rights to the World Series and only the flagship stations of the two participating ballclubs can originate coverage, though their broadcasts are also available on XM Satellite Radio as well as the subscription Gameday Audio package on MLB.com. All other network affiliates of the two clubs must carry the ESPN Radio feed, and they may not even be able to do so if they compete with an ESPN Radio affiliate in the same market. Additionally, the two flagships must broadcast ESPN Radio national commercials during their game coverage. Additionally, radio stations are not allowed to broadcast any MLB games in the live Internet streams of their station programming or on out-of-market radio affiliates that carry the station's main signal. Some stations will replace the game with a recorded message explaining why the game cannot be heard on their stream. Others will simply stream the station's regularly scheduled programming that is being preempted by the game.
