Yep.
The Reds claimed territory is Ohio, except for the Cleveland DMA; Indiana, except for the immediate Chicago suburbs; Kentucky; Tennessee; the part of Mississippi that is in the Memphis DMA; the Charleston, Huntington, and Parkersburg areas of West Virginia, and the western third of North Carolina.
And I am not picking on the Reds., who are my team Almost every team did this. The claims pre-date even the invention of the DMA. Done for radio purposes back in the Bowie Kuhn era. They just let each team claim what it wanted to, and let things “quilt” or “overlap”. IMHO, the Pirates are the worst offenders, but they are all bad.
The problem is that “your” team is blacked out. So you do not get “your” team in MLB.TV or MLBEI, and, many times have to subscribe to the Sports Pack on DirecTV to get all of the RSNs that are “local” to you and often simply cannot get them all on cable.
The worst situation is the entire state of Iowa, claimed by both Chicago teams, Milwaukee, Minnesota, Kansas City, and St. Louis; and Las Vegas, claimed by both Bay Area teams, both LA teams, San Diego, and Arizona. That means that 6/30ths or 20% of the games will NOT be on MLBEI or MLB.TV there, yet they charge the same for it.
And, under this new idea, which involves IN MARKET streaming, an Iowan or Las Vegas-ite would have to buy SIX different streaming packages, plus MLB.TV to get all the games.
Bud “Light” (Kennesaw Molehill) Selig, the worst Commissioner ever, until the current baseball hating Manfred came along, SAID he was going to fix this. Which, as stated above, would be simple. Simple survey the fans, as well as look at things like ticket and regalia sales, sports page coverage, radio affiliates, etc, and CANCEL the claims that make no sense. For example the Indians claim my area. There are ZERO Indians fans here. Simply INFORM the Indians their claim is cancelled. Best interests of Baseball power. But, like with everything, Selig talked, but did nothing about it.
