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Major League Baseball Releases Webcasting Plans
TopShelf writes "With spring in the air, it's time to discuss the (US) national pastime. According to this story at CNN, Major League Baseball is planning to webcast 1,000 games this season. The interesting part is that in order not to violate TV blackout rules, they'll try to deny service to viewers who instead have local broadcasts available, using Quova's user-location service. At last, an opportunity to see my hometown Detroit Tigers more than once a year!"
According to the article, they will check the Quova results against the zip code for the credit card you provide to them. If there's a discrepancy, they will call you.
And, if you're caught intentionally trying to circumvent the system, your credit card will automatically be charged $100.
This is usually due to the player's association's liscensing (sp) decisions. The NFLPA tends to be fairly loose about using the likeness of a past team, although many of the players from that era aren't accuratly represented, and the few that are usually show up because they don't have a limitation on the use of their likeness.
For example, former Cleveland Browns Running back Jim Brown isn't listed as a player with the 1965 Cleveland Browns, but there will be a running back with the number 32 for that team.
The ability to use "all time" teams could be disappearing in the near future. With the popularity of "throwback" jerseys, many retired players have begun looking into the idea of being paid likeness rights (or the jersey equivilent). In their defense, this is fair. Current players get a piece of the merchandising pie, while money from retired players just goes to the retired players association or, in some cases, a general pension fund.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
There are several windows programs Visual Route and another I think is called NeoTrace, I'm sure there's something like this for Linux.
sig.
Your post is so three hours ago ;)
I'm on the fence as to whether to subscribe this year. If they changed things so you can't listen to he games on Linux, I ain't subscribing.
Incidentally, I just found out by reading the FAQ that they are offering a $12 package that just includes games from your favorite team. I might just go this route, since I never listen to any other games. To get it, you need to register from your teams' MLB.com website...
The CART ChampCar World Series has a really nice feature on their website that lets you watch all their races for free. The catch is that they don't put them up until 5 days after the race is brodcast on CBS or SpeedTV, but it's still nice to be able to actually watch the race for those of us without cable. No ads, either.
It's just really cool to see a sport actually doing sometihng for the fans and not just as a cash grab.
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Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Don't underestimate the money and eyeballs involved in fantasy baseball. Fanatics will watch practically any game they can to see their or their prospective players play. This is precisely why you (well, not the parent on top, but someone) might want to watch games besides the hometeam's.
People happily pay $80 season just for a service that gives you [freely available] stats and tells you their opinion of who is good and who isn't. Being able to catch the occasional game to do some "scouting" would probably be worth just as much.
And, as amazing as it might sound, some people actually enjoy watching more than one team's games.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
Acutally, blackouts happen in areas which baseball teams consider their "home territory". The reason for the blackout is to enforce at least some people going to the games. Game not sold out, ok, then you can't watch it on tv at home, you shoulda bought a ticket. If the game is sold out, the game isn't blacked out in that "home" area. The problem is that baseball teams in particular claim HUGE areas as their "home territory", from which their fans travel to see games. We live ~4hrs drive time from our "local" pro team, yet based on our ZIP code, we're not allowed to see some of their games via our satellite dish. When I called and talked to them, they gave the reason above.
I used to have a good sig...
I've always thought that sports such as Baseball and cricket would be the ideal choices to initiate web broadcasts. Mainly because the majority of action takes place on a (relatively) static screen, and so could presumably be reasonably well compressed compared to faster moving games(in terms of both the sport and the camera sweeps used) such as basketball or soccer.
Only if you are using Windows since the NFL (and college sports via Yahoo) streams only work in Windows Media Player. If you are using Linux you are SOL. There is no RealPlayer feed AFAIK.
:-)
I've never been able to get WMP streams to work in Linux MPlayer. Oh, well, there's always the sports bar.
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