This does, finally, make sense of the money issue.

Although different reports were estimating different amounts of net profit for the teams involved in the DirecTV deal, none of them seemed enough to justify the bad press.

This, on the other hand, looks like it could be huge.

You're right, We all knew it was about the money but looked at from this point of view the pieces fit much better.

One thing I still haven't seen, and I admit I haven't looked to hard, is WHEN this might go into effect? As a Dish subcriber am I looking at having to make a change for this season (and yes, I'll switch to DirectTV), or is this still something coming down the road?

~Mark

The deal is not finalized. I'd hold off on switching until you hear otherwise. They may be getting enough of a bad reaction from fans to rethink the exclusive.

I still think this is a bunch of ill-considered speculation. The problem with taking MLBAM public is and has always been that it would open the books on MLB because of the disclosure process. Even without labor negotiations going, it seems it would make no sense for the notoriously secretive owners to give up a cash cow, unless they think growth is about to stall.

I've heard that the time GM started it's great decline is when the chairman Thomas Murphy said "General Motors is not in the business of making cars. General Motors is in the business of making money.". I see the same thing happening with MLB. The focus on increasing revenue may work in the short-term, as it did for GM decades ago. But in the long-term losing focus of what's best for the fans may lead to a decline.

So are you all saying that the report that MLB is more willing to give Extra Innings to DirecTV rather than cable has nothing to do with their desire to have their Baseball Channel placed on basic cable, which supposedly DirecTV has promised to do, unlike cable which at this point would only say that it would put such a channel on a premiumn sports tier?

Phils fans are not completely blacked out on Direct TV. My brother is out of market, uses DirectTV and basically just watches the feed of whatever team the Phils are playing. Unfortunately he never gets to hear Harry the K's sweet pipes, but it is better than nothing...

It could be more DirecTV subscribers (as a percentage) than cable subscribers purchase the baseball package because sports fans, who would be more likely to buy Extra Innings, are more likely to have DirecTV because of its NFL Sunday Ticket exclusive.

I think the Directv "exclusive" is partially because they came up with the extra dough and partially because the others are attempting to lowball -- under the false assumption that MLB would favor universal availability to customers vs. profit margin.

Personally, I don't see the reason to double your market by halving your price to distributors/providers. If cable and dish stepped up at the same rate Directv offered, do you think MLB would turn them down?

I don't think MLB.tv can be viewed as an acceptable alternative to anyone but very avid fans.

I still don't understand how watching the grainy, often interrupted MLB.tv feed will replace watching almost every baseball game on my 60" HDTV. That argument seems far fetched.

This deal will be great for DirecTV, but I'm not sure it will be good for anyone else, including MLB. The only good that can come out of this is Extra Innings in all HD, since it will be awhile before cable can support that and even longer before MLB.tv will.

DirecTV was always sports oriented so when people chose satellite they went with DTV. Cable subscribers choose cable because satellite isn't an option. This doesn't mean they aren't sports viewers.

I'm not much of a sports viewer. I'm a baseball viewer.