Am I subject to more blackouts because I subscribe to MLB EI ?

[sobonefnet]

Here is the situation. Phillies/Dodgers are playing tonight. It's a national broadcast on ESPN. I am blacked out of this game on ESPN. Yes, I can watch it on the MLB EI feed but, I don't want to. The Pirates are my regional team, so it can't be a "home" team issue. Am I being blacked out because of the MLB EI feed that is available to me?

I called D* and asked about it, some guy wanted to reference the "Patriots" as my home/regional feed. So, that conversation didn't last long.

 

[DodgerKing]

Here is the situation. Phillies/Dodgers are playing tonight. It's a national broadcast on ESPN. I am blacked out of this game on ESPN. Yes, I can watch it on the MLB EI feed but, I don't want to. The Pirates are my regional team, so it can't be a "home" team issue. Am I being blacked out because of the MLB EI feed that is available to me?

I called D* and asked about it, some guy wanted to reference the "Patriots" as my home/regional feed. So, that conversation didn't last long.

I don't think it has anything to do with the fact that you have EI. You just live in one of those areas with weird blackout rules.

BTW, the Dodgers out of division away announcing team (Vin never travels east of CO), Eric Collins and Steve Lyons, are not as good as Vin. I am not too upset that you do not want to watch the Dodgers feed. If Vinny was announcing, that would be a different issue.

 

[DodgerKing]

I did discover that "Gamesearch" doesn't work once the game is past the scheduled time.

 

[sobonefnet]

I was able to view all national broadcasts of Phillies games last year. And the territories haven't changed. Is there any avenue of appeal through MLB?

 

[FlyingJ]

Once again, the whole blackout thing is just too ridiculous for words. I'm just waiting to see if I don't get the Reds/Phillies game that the Reds are not broadcasting that was mentioned earlier. I think that I am in the Reds/ Indians and Pirates area, yep, Pirates, imagine that here in the center of Ohio. Every year we hear about them maybe addressing this situation and every year nothing happens. It is a cop out that D* can blame on MLB, and getting anything done on the MLB side of things is an incredible longshot at best in the short term.
The fact that they sometimes do broadcast the Phils feed, as Sobo mentioned proves that they can and will, so what the heck is stopping them on the other dates? We saw it last year, what could have changed?

 

[littleguy]

I live in Charlotte, NC and for some odd reason Reds are one of my home teams. IMagine that. The reds are always blacked out for me even though I have MLBEI because direct wants me to pay for the sports pak to watch the reds. They do not include that channel with my choice extra package. Explain to me why should I pay an extra $5 a month for one team? I thought that why I bought MLBEI to watch all the games. Just sucks when my cards played the reds this weekend and was blackout from watching.

 

[sobonefnet]

I guess we should be glad we don't get screwed like the folks in Nevada. I think they get 4 or 5 teams blacked out. This really needs to be addressed be MLB. Another thing I forgot to mention in my original post, I also subscribe to Dish Network. I turned the game on last night on ESPN, and it was NOT blacked out on DN. So, if D* and E* have to abide by the same rules/territories brought down by MLB, why was it available to me on one carrier and not the other???

 

[DodgerKing]

I guess we should be glad we don't get screwed like the folks in Nevada. I think they get 4 or 5 teams blacked out. This really needs to be addressed be MLB. Another thing I forgot to mention in my original post, I also subscribe to Dish Network. I turned the game on last night on ESPN, and it was NOT blacked out on DN. So, if D* and E* have to abide by the same rules/territories brought down by MLB, why was it available to me on one carrier and not the other???

You also have to remember that Dish is pretty loose when it comes to "accidentally forgetting" to blackout a game. It could be that they have a different boundary for their DMA or LiL?

Other than that, I have no idea. The blackout rules are set by the league, not the provider. EI would have no impact on your game being blacked out. If you have a neighbor that has Direct and no EI, you could ask them if they were able to watch the game.