Major League Baseball blackout policy

U.S.A. MLB Blackout map

All of the Contiguous United States, except for some small, remote, isolated patches, are within at least one team's blackout territory. Some areas may lie within the territories of two or more. As the accompanying map shows, teams generally have exclusive territorial rights only over their home cities' immediate area, but even then there are exceptions. For example, all of Texas, including the Houston metropolitan area as well as the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, as well as the entire state of Louisiana, is within both the Astros' and Rangers' blackout areas.

Outside of the immediate area, several teams may exercise blackout rights within the same territory. The entire state of Iowa, for example, is within the blackout areas of the Cubs, White Sox, Brewers, Twins, Cardinals, and Royals. Southern Nevada likewise lies within six MLB teams' blackout territories (Athletics, Giants, Angels, Dodgers, Padres, Diamondbacks). Areas of far western Kansas and the Nebraska panhandle represent an anomaly; although being geographically closer to Denver than Kansas City, they are included in the blackout territory for the Royals and not the Rockies. This is likely a remnant of pre-1993 territorial exclusions, since the Royals were the only team between Kansas City and California, except for the Astros and Rangers, between 1969 and 1992. A similar anomaly is that the El Paso area in Texas is not within the blackout territory of the Arizona Diamondbacks, despite El Paso being considerably closer to Phoenix than to either Texas-based MLB team (the New Mexico side of the El Paso area, by contrast, is within the D-Backs' blackout zone). This is also likely a remnant of territorial exclusions predating the D-Backs' 1998 entry into MLB.

MLB relies on ZIP code prefixes (the first three digits of a ZIP code) to determine its blackout areas. For some areas in the West Valley of greater Phoenix, the ZIP code prefix is 853. Because of this, a fan that resides within 10 miles of Chase Field will be blacked out of all online San Diego Padres games. It's likely this is a remnant of the Padres' former blackout territory; prior to the Diamondbacks' arrival, all of Arizona was included in the Padres' blackout territory.

Local broadcasts are not necessarily available in the whole blackout territory. For example, Fox Sports Wisconsin is unavailable in Iowa, so Milwaukee Brewers games are unavailable in the state.

Due to the fact that they play in Canada, the Toronto Blue Jays do not have any part of their blackout territory in the United States.

Canadian regions subject to

  Toronto Blue Jays exclusively

  Shared with Seattle Mariners

  Shared with Minnesota Twins

  Shared with Boston Red Sox

Note: Toronto Blue Jays territory covers all of Canada

The Toronto Blue Jays' blackout territory includes all of Canada. However, they must share British Columbia and Alberta with the Seattle Mariners, Saskatchewan and Manitoba with the Minnesota Twins, and the Maritimes with the Boston Red Sox. In the past, the province of Quebec was not included in Toronto's territory, as it belonged to the Montreal Expos exclusively. Toronto and Montreal shared all territory outside of Ontario and Quebec. Toronto Blue Jays games are aired on Sportsnet in Canada. Also, Blue Jays games broadcast nationally over-the-air on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television network have occasionally been subject to local blackout on CBET-TV, near Detroit.

Consumer devices that enable television subscribers to transmit their home television feed outside their host area to a remote location over the Internet, a practice called placeshifting, have drawn the ire of MLB. MLB's position is that subscribers who wish to watch MLB telecasts while traveling either settle for the local telecasts available or subscribe to MLB's own broadcasts for an additional fee. Consumer advocates insist the practice is legal, since the remoted content is already purchased and is merely placeshifted by the subscriber; they claim MLB is asking fans to pay twice for the same content. MLB counters that travelers utilizing placeshifting technology are undercutting the blackout rights MLB grants to local and national broadcasters, as well as MLB's own internet service.

In 2009, MLB launched MLB Network on basic cable similar to the NFL Network. As part of the new network, MLB has told owners to reduce their blackouts due to outrage amongst fans and letters pouring into MLB's offices. In particular, MLB is looking to address the availability of regional sports networks outside teams' immediate home markets. Ostensibly, if teams/channels are not available in certain locations, teams could lose their claims to such areas and coverage would be replaced by the MLB-controlled Extra Innings service.

In MLB, there are no radio blackouts, although ESPN Radio has exclusive rights to the World Series and only the flagship stations of the two participating ballclubs can originate coverage, though their broadcasts are also available on XM Satellite Radio as well as the subscription Gameday Audio package on MLB.com. All other network affiliates of the two clubs must carry the ESPN Radio feed, and they may not even be able to do so if they compete with an ESPN Radio affiliate in the same market. Additionally, the two flagships must broadcast ESPN Radio national commercials during their game coverage (though they can run live commercial reads for local sponsors during broadcasts and sell ads during typically extended pre/post-game shows).

Additionally, radio stations (including flagships) are not allowed to broadcast any MLB games in the live Internet streams of their station programming or on out-of-market radio affiliates that carry the station's main signal. (MLB makes its own streams of the team networks available for a fee.) Some stations will replace the game with a recorded message explaining why the game cannot be heard on their stream. Others will simply stream the station's regularly scheduled programming that is being preempted by the game.

• Syndication exclusivity

• Singin' the 'Baseball Blackout Blues', ESPN.com, May 15, 2007