– MLB will work with DirecTV, Comcast and 21st Century Fox to offer live-streaming of in-market games by 2017 or MLB will be prohibited from increasing the price of its MLB.tv packages. The MLB said of the settlement, “We can confirm that a settlement of the Garber case has been reached”. Lawyers for baseball and an MLB spokesman did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
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In 2012, lawyers representing the fans claimed teams and some television network entities had violated antitrust laws by colluding to enforce strict regional boundaries for airing games and in doing so limited or even eliminated competition in certain areas and allowed the price to be driven artificially high.
The deal came weeks after baseball’s lawyers told a judge that for the first time the league was going to let fans buy single-team online TV packages.
The trial had been scheduled to start Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, though officials indicated last week that it was unlikely to take place as both sides and the judge ceased filing papers associated with the case. The baseball suit had already prompted changes. The plaintiffs had argued that Major League Baseball was illegally restraining competition by limiting the markets in which its 30 teams can make broadcast deals.
Also, the settlement allows fans to watch the visiting team’s television feed when they play “in-market” teams, as long as that fan is an authorized cable subscriber to the Regional Sports Network that carries the “in-market” team’s games. For a Mets fan living in Iowa, there are no major-league teams based in her state, yet six teams hold broadcast rights there, three of them in the National League: the Chicago Cubs, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Milwaukee Brewers. He lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where the team is often blacked out. Fans said this forced them to buy costly bundles of games they did not care about, rather than spend less to buy games “a la carte”, if they wanted to watch their preferred teams. “You don’t want all revenues to go to the Yankees and the Dodgers”, he said.
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In 2013, U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled baseball could not use its antitrust exemption as a defense.
