Sorry to all who were offended, I was in no way trying to be condescending at all. Black out rules are a huge pain in the neck, I have dealt with many sat companies and cable and some blackouts are still a mystery to me.
It is really not DirecTV that states these games will be blacked out unless you are in the local area on a RSN or have purchased the sports package, major league sports commissions charge a huge dime for stations to carry coverage of an event. It costs DirecTV a lot to offer someone all these games, so they have to charge a large fee to be able to view them. The language in the package description is misleading, as you have to chance to view all these games if you keep giving them money!
I heard recently that DirecTV will offer the option to purchase individual games for like $4.99 or something like that, on a pay per view basis. Can anyone confirm this?
A "Team Subscription" would also be nice, allowing a person to pay a fee (might come out to like $25 per season) in order to view all the games for a specific team. So if you are a St Louis fan that just moved to Tampa, you can buy the Cards season and only those games will be available to you. That would be pretty cool, and i think a lot of folks would buy into that if DirecTV offered it.
Local games will be blacked out for the sole reason of money. It costs a lot for a local channel (like FSN Arizona) to broadcast a diamondbacks game (who wants to watch them anyways??......). The local channel wants to force local viewers to watch that feed so they can maximize advertising money and earn a return on the cost of the game. It would violate that principal if i lived in Phoenix and watched the Dbacks and the dodgers on the LA feed, i would be watching LA commercials and adding to LAs viewer pool.
In any kind of team subscription type thing, the league would probably only be getting more money above and beyond the normal DirecTV sports package subscribers. I would think they charge networks a flat fee to cover the games, so if you are another viewer to that game you would be making the network you are watching more money by looking at their ads. The league would not make anything else, as they have already charged that network for the price of the game.
Then you get into things like in my home town of Chicago. The Hawks owner will not broadcast any game unless the stadium is sold out. That is where the league loses money, as they are being denied the opportunity to sell the coverage of the game to a network, and makes everyone around angry.
The whole process of all of this black outs and regional coverage is all based on Money. The league wants to make money, the networks do, and so does DirecTV. It is totally out of the question to even dream of having "no blackouts", as this would mean an end to most local networks.
Stunt - You may want to call Directv and see what regional sports network you fall under. They should be able to tell you what you will get as a viewer in a local market.
