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Originally Posted by Coder
I don't quite understand the blackout rules.. i thought they were intended to put people in the seats at the stadiums, i.e. earn the teams more money..
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The blackout is not to get more people in the seats, it is to protect the local-television-rights owners. Because they are paying the teams for the right to broadcast the games, they should not be subject to having their audience watch on the internet or cable package because they will not get the ratings, or so the reasoning goes. The problem is that in some cases, the games are not being broadcast in their home areas, such as Hawaii, or the 100+ Royals games here (not like I care about KC, but someone may (but probably not because so many games are not on the air)).
The NBA was smart about it. Back before OKC got the Thunder, the Mavs games were broadcast on Fox Sports Southwest. However, not all of the games would be broadcast on the network as sometimes there was a national college football game that would get precedence in OKC over the Mavs. The NBA League Pass would blackout all games within the 50 mile radius of the team (which would always get the local game), but would only blackout on the cable package if the game was actually being broadcast in that area. So if FSSW was blacked outdue to another event or the game being broadcast over-the-air in Dallas, you could watch on League Pass, and if it was being shown on FSSW, League Pass was blacked out instead. Much better system.