Dodgers, Time Warner, DirecTV All Deserve Blame
- Updated: February 22, 2015
(Picture via @Dodgers)
Opening Day is just a few weeks away, and with it comes another season of hope and optimism across Major League Baseball (well… most of Major League Baseball. Sucks to suck, Diamondbacks).
But if you’re like 70% of the market in Los Angeles, Opening Day 2015 will mean as much to you as it did in 2014 – nothing. That’s because you still won’t be able to see the Dodgers on SportsNet LA due to a now year-long impasse between Time Warner Cable, who owns the channel and cut a deal with the Dodgers to broadcast games, and providers like DirecTV who have balked at the rate Time Warner demands they pay to carry the games to their customers.
Last week, ESPN’s Mark Saxon reported that Major League Baseball and new commissioner Rob Manfred are on the record about what they can do to help compel Time Warner and others to come to an agreement – absolutely nothing.
“Distribution issues are fundamentally issues between the rights holder and the distributors. I have no role or leverage in terms of inducing anybody to do anything in that process,” Manfred told a group of ESPN reporters. “We stay in touch with the Dodgers, the Dodgers are very concerned and obviously want to have distribution, as do we, but we just don’t really have a seat at that table.”
Manfred is, unfortunately, right about baseball’s role in the dispute between cable providers. And considering that TWC guaranteed the Dodgers more than $8 billion across 25 years in the deal, they certainly have an interest in getting as much as they can from other cable providers. Manfred’s candid admission about his office’s helplessness is telling and depressing – especially after former commissioner Bud Selig last year said his office would do “everything we can to break the impasse.”
Unfortunately, there’s no reason to believe Time Warner Cable will suddenly become charitable with DirecTV and other providers after overpricing their market with this massive deal the Dodgers greedily gobbled up while knowing other providers would balk. If it hasn’t happened for more than 12 months, and a full season has already been missed, why would it be more likely that a deal will magically happen now?
And there is no reason to believe DirecTV and other distributors will suddenly see the value in SportsNet LA and pony up extra cash to carry the channel, especially as DirecTV refuses to head to arbitration during negotiations. As great as Dodger games are, the prospect of a year-round Dodgers channel with months of offseason time to fill probably doesn’t sound too appealing to distributors (after all, you can only watch the ’88 World Series so many times before you flip over to a Clippers game or some football).
One season without Vin Scully, Clayton Kershaw, Yasiel Puig and the Dodgers was too much for baseball fans in southern California – to have a dispute like this drag into a second season is completely unacceptable. The Dodgers, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, and every other cable provider involved in this impasse deserves the blame, and the fact that a resolution is likely still months away speaks volumes to the ineptitude and ignorance of every party. And folks, when you’re as bad as the Astros at something, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
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