Whew!
That was a close one. It wasn’t until around 4:30 ET that Red Sox fans found out that ESPN would waive their Sunday Night Exclusivity to baseball broadcast. Under the current rules, the second game of the double-header at Comerica Park would have not been televised, leaving Sox fans to seek out Bill O’Brien and Joe Castiglione’s broadcast.
Luckily, ESPN gave the Red Sox a break. But would this deal have been made if it were say the White Sox vs. Tampa Bay? Probably not.
Blackout rules are not new and have been in existence since 1991. FOX has Saturday afternoon rights and ESPN owns Sunday nights. Even with a subscription to MLB Extra Innings, you still won’t have access to games like you would on a Tuesday or Wednesday night.
Red Sox fans flooded the phone lines today with the complaints and ESPN was good to oblige this request. Boston has grown used to seeing every single game and there is probably a sense of entitlement there.
I know I was aggravated and looking for MLB/ESPN to make an exception.
Sunday night’s matchup features Josh Beckett and Justin Verlander — two of the American League’s best pitchers and ratings will be high given Memorial Day Weekend.
The national exclusivity agreements expire in 2013 and one has to wonder if there aren’t some more exceptions built into the broadcast contracts to avoid situations like this. Rumor has it that both FOX and ESPN will be looking for even more games in primetime and that will only exacerbate the current issue.
ESPN wants you to watch Cincinnati-Atlanta tonight. Consider stopping in for a few minutes to take a look at that game, if nothing but a tip of that for letting us watch our Red Sox.
It’s not always that media machines with millions of dollars on the line accommodate others so nicely, but today is a good example of where they did. ESPN had no obligation to do so. Detroit couldf have scheduled the traditional double-header and played both games in the day time.
But the Tigers’ organization wanted the concessions and the ticket gate revenue as Red Sox games draw well. Cannot blame them for that. So it put the onus on Bristol to decide how to handle this. I think a lot of us were fully expecting to tune into WEEI if need be.
Thanks to ESPN, we can breathe a sigh of relief.