If you’re a baseball fan and a Comcast subscriber, you may have had to watch the games in a different way than usual. Due to an expired carriage agreement between Comcast and the media company Diamond Sports Group, which owns 18 regional sports networks, Comcast customers in more than a dozen markets were unable to watch their local Major League Baseball teams on TV.
The way we consume sports has changed significantly over the years. In the past, sports teams would sell their rights to regional sports networks, which would then sell carriage rights to cable companies. However, with the rise of streaming services, consumers now have more options. They can choose to buy only what they want instead of the whole bundle. Some are even opting to pirate the games instead, according to Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith. “There’s stations you can go to that are stealing the signals,” he said. “It’s something that a lot of youth know how to access.”
Nowadays, some sports teams are selling their rights directly to local broadcasting affiliates instead of regional sports networks. These can be accessed through cable or even with rabbit ears, according to Brian Wieser of Madison and Wall consulting firm. “So free-to-air,” he said. “Which has the added benefit of broadening the appeal potentially of a sport, making it possible for people without a subscription to see these games.” It’s like going back in time to how we used to watch sports in the ’70s and ’80s.
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