My dad moved to Las Vegas several years ago. When I visit him, sometimes I get a hankering to watch a little Major League Baseball.
Being from Los Angeles, the Dodgers are my first choice. Once in a while, I’ll get curious about how the Angels are doing.
Vegas is considered a home media market for both the Dodgers and Angels. But I can’t use my MLB.TV login to watch either team due to MLB’s blackout rules.
If I wanna watch either of those teams, I need access to a cable, satellite, or streaming plan that carries the right regional sports network. My dad has Cox, which carries FanDuel Sports West for the Angels, but not SportsNet LA for the Dodgers.
My example isn’t unique. Across the country, MLB fans have to deal with the league’s confusing, fractured broadcast situation. It’s easier if you live in a market with a team. But if you don’t, where you live can mean you’re blacked out of up to six teams’ games.
I’ll break through the confusion and give you clear answers about why you might be experiencing a blackout in your area and what you can do about it.
What are blackouts, and how do they work in MLB?
Blackouts happen when a sporting event doesn’t air on TV because of a viewer’s location. It generally impacts fans who don’t live in the TV market of their favorite team(s) or when a game is broadcast on national TV.
The reason there are blackouts in every televised sport is because leagues and teams make exclusive media deals with local and national television networks. Those agreements bring in millions of dollars.
In professional baseball, blackout rules work much like they do in the NBA and NHL. Local channels or regional sports networks have priority over national ones, which is why most MLB teams air more than 100 games on the same local channel.
Generally, if a game airs on a national channel—i.e., ESPN, TBS, or a streamer like Netflix or Apple TV—it won’t air on a team’s local channel. That’s a blackout.
Another example of a blackout is when you live so far from an MLB team that you don’t have access to its local channel, but close enough that you’re still technically within its broadcast region.
You’d think that out-of-market services like MLB.TV or MLB EXTRA INNINGS would solve that. But in this specific situation, the service will decide you’re actually in the market, and will black you out.
What parts of the country have the most MLB blackouts?
There’s really no avoiding blackouts. But if you live in certain parts of the country, they can get annoying fast.
The most famous example is Iowa, which sits in the home territory of six—that’s right, six— MLB teams. Those teams are the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, St. Louis Cardinals, Kansas City Royals, Minnesota Twins, and Milwaukee Brewers.
If you’re in Las Vegas like my dad, you also have to deal with six teams blacked out: the Arizona Diamondbacks, Los Angeles Angels, Los Angeles Dodgers, Athletics, San Diego Padres, and San Francisco Giants. That will change, though, once the Athletics officially move to Vegas.
Hawaii—a literal island—is blacked out of Dodgers, Angels, Giants, Athletics, and Padres games.
All of this means that fans can’t use MLB.TV or MLB EXTRA INNINGS to watch a large percentage of the league in these and other states. It’s a little silly, if you ask me.
The only real solution for fans in these situations is signing up for a TV service that offers multiple RSNs. DIRECTV and Fubo are the industry standard for access to multiple MLB teams, regardless of location. They won’t get you all 162 games for a given team—remember those pesky national blackouts—but they’ll get you close.
Why you should trust us
Our CableTV.com junior sports writer, Alex Vejar, used his experience as a jumping-off point to search the wide world of MLB blackouts. Using that information, he tried finding solutions for fans who find themselves blacked out from their favorite teams.
Check out our How We Rank page to learn more about our methods.
