TV Sports
Extra Innings Throws a Curve, and Fans Cry Foul
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By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: January 26, 2007
Jeanette Bottone cried last week when she heard that the Extra Innings package of major league baseball games that she has diligently watched on cable since 2002 was about to migrate to DirecTV in April.
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Schedule/Results Individual Stats | Team Roster | History Discuss the Mets “It’s really a big part of our summertime,” she said by telephone from her condominium in Wellesley, Mass. “But that didn’t last long. And then I felt angry.”
Bottone and her husband bought Extra Innings to keep track of the Yankees. Her father, Lou, was a minor leaguer in the Yankee system in the 1930s.
“But it’s exciting to watch the other teams if the games are important, and because there are certain players I like,” she said, adding, “I’m sad, but it won’t really hit me until those channels won’t have the games.”
Bottone is part of the resentment expressed on fan forums, blogs and inside my e-mail inbox against a pending seven-year, $700 million deal that would shift Extra Innings this season into an exclusive arrangement with DirecTV after five seasons of being available to 75 million cable, DirecTV and Dish homes.
A writer on the Cards Fan Union blog said, “I feel as though I’ve just had my teeth worked on with a drill that entered my body through my big toe.”
On the umpbump.com fan site, a screed against the deal was titled, “MLB Only Needs 700 Million Reasons to Tell You to Drop Dead.”
The deal would also make DirecTV the exclusive home of the 24/7 baseball channel that will launch in 2009 — but that is not the concern of the devotees who will be disenfranchised by cable’s and Dish’s loss of Extra Innings if the agreement is completed. It will be difficult for them to see much besides Major League Baseball getting $30 million more a year than what InDemand, the consortium that distributed Extra Innings to cable systems, bid to renew it.
This is a case of taking something that a part of the fan base has grown accustomed to and selling it to a higher bidder, which is available to 15 million subscribers, less than one-fifth the cable universe.
And it raises these simple questions: Why anger any part of your fan base? Why marginalize any part of your fan base?
“It’s shocking to me because it’s a move to have less of an audience and less coverage nationally,” said Dan Quinn, a graduate student from Newton, Mass., who roots for the Yankees.
Without Extra Innings, he added, “I’ll be stuck watching the Red Sox.”
It will not assuage those fans with cable or Dish, who should expect to see their Extra Innings ties broken, that they will still be able to watch hundreds of games a year on local stations, regional sports networks, Fox, ESPN and TBS. They have been treated to a somewhat privileged view of baseball from 10 Extra Innings channels — and now that will be taken away.
This situation is different from that of Sunday Ticket, the package of CBS’s and Fox’s Sunday afternoon, out-of-market N.F.L. games that are available only on DirecTV, which pays $700 million annually for it. Cable subscribers never had it, and while they may covet it, they can’t complain that they once had it but that it was sold to DirecTV, because DirecTV has always had it.
There will be only two options for discarded Extra Innings fans. They can switch from cable to DirecTV, which is impossible if landlords or condominium boards prohibit dishes, or if their exposure is wrong to snare the signal.
Baseball is counting on fans who lack any building or geographic hindrances to change to DirecTV. It may be right, even if it has to wait for the anger of fans to dissipate.
But Mark Requet, the co-owner of a weekly newspaper in rural Shelbina, Mo., said he would not switch from Dish to DirecTV, even if it means curtailing his ability to watch Mets games, his sole reason for buying Extra Innings for the first time last year. “I’m pretty satisfied with Dish and I’ve heard other people say they have trouble with DirecTV in bad weather,” he said.
The second option is subscribing to a seasonlong package of mlb.tv, the video streaming arm of mlb.com, for $79.95, nearly $100 less than last year’s suggested retail price for Extra Innings for cable subscribers.
It requires a broadband connection, which is increasingly common; there are 57 million subscribers, through cable and telephone connections, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association, a trade group.
Bottone said that mlb.tv is her backup, but she must go to her husband’s office a town away to watch. “But it doesn’t work that well,” she said.
Even with planned upgrades to mlb.tv’s video quality, watching a game on a computer screen is a different experience than taking it in on a TV screen, which allows viewers to be more than three feet away.
Yes, newer televisions allow for a relatively easy connection from the computer, but the quality of the picture degrades in the transfer. And streaming can be bedeviled by breakdowns and choppy pictures.
Baseball isn’t talking for now. How it eventually explains the deal — and tries to temper fan discontent — will be fascinating.
E-mail: sportsbiz@nytimes.com
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I am very disappointed in the decision to limit the number of potential viewers. I had every intention of purchasing MLB Extra Innings this summer.
I recently moved to Boston from the midwest and I am a huge Twins fan. I went through some serious withdrawl the final month of last season without any Twins baseball.
Finding out I’d have to switch to DirecTV was a huge disappointment. I definitely don’t want to switch to DirecTV and the streaming video option seems plausible, but with connection and quality issues one has to wonder if it’s really worth the trouble.
Needless to say this was a bad move for baseball.