The snacks were carefully assembled and Clyde Matsui, who once sold programs at Candlestick Park, even had a prized Giants shirt on in anticipation of San Francisco’s opening day game Sunday against Arizona.
Just one problem: “I turn on the (ESPN2) channel and there’s no (Giants-Diamondbacks) game on. They had different programming,” Matsui said.
“There was no forewarning, either,” Matsui lamented.
Welcome to another season of Major League Baseball in paradise.
And, it wasn’t just Giants’ fans caught in this annual squeeze play, either.
Sunday MLB.TV was scheduled to show the final Dodgers-Angels Freeway Series game. Unless you live in Hawaii.
Monday morning viewers who turned on ESPN for the Dodgers-Padres’ season opener got…well, soccer highlights and other things. Never too early to preview that Dortmund vs. Hamburger SV Bundesliga matchup, after all.
For the ninth consecutive season Hawaii baseball fans find themselves prisoners to the arcane MLB blackout policy. Seasons and commissioners have come and gone but the dreaded blackout remains.
Never mind that Hawaii is 2,500 miles from the nearest MLB stadiums, our state has been chosen as a “home territory” by five teams: A’s, Angels, Dodgers, Giants and Padres.
It is not an honor. It just means that if you don’t allow them to pick your pockets, their games can be blacked out here across a number of media platforms, including MLB.TV, ESPN, Fox and others.
The MLB.com website notes: “Home television territory blackout restrictions apply regardless of whether a club is home or away and regardless of whether or not the game is televised in a club’s home television territory.”
It is a hijacking the mob would be proud of and it works like this: Teams sell regional rights to a carrier and the carrier then leverages them to cable operators. Pay up or risk being blacked out.
The thing is how many cable operators want to ante up individually for a handful of teams, some of which have demand almost $5 per month per home? Especially when customers are already cable-cutting to rid themselves of expanding cable bills.
The pace of play isn’t the only reason baseball’s TV ratings aren’t busting through the roof.
Oceanic Cable has been unwilling to ante up for the Giants, A’s, Angels, Padres etc. so the blackout is on. Oceanic, because it was owned by Time Warner, gets the Dodgers, whose Sports Net LA regional network is owned by Time Warner. Competitor Hawaiian Telcom doesn’t.
One of the few cracks in the blackout has been KITV bringing in a slate of Giants game (18 are planned this year) on its MeTV digital platform.
At one time the Seattle Mariners had also claimed Hawaii as a “home territory” but gave up the farce and agreed to what MLB call a “temporary waiver” that allows their games to be shown here.
An ESPN spokesman wrote in an email, “We are full national and exclusive on Sunday Night Baseball and we co-exist on more telecasts than not. In the occasion of blackouts we have been told that nothing has changed for this season.”
A spokesman for MLB did not reply to phone and email queries Monday.
Hawaii is not the only victim in this long distance money grab. Fans in Las Vegas have six teams (A’s, Angeles, Diamondbacks, Dodgers and Padres) staking claim to their wallets. And places in Iowa have been claimed by five (Cardinals, Cubs, Rockies, Twins and White Sox).
But that doesn’t make the practice any less egregious by MLB or any less frustrating for fans in Hawaii.
