Wednesday/Thursday BP: MLB partners with Apple for broadcasting deal, still no games to broadcast

Good morning, baseball fans.

As if we needed another reason to be annoyed with MLB, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced this week that Apple TV will be partnering with MLB on an exclusive streaming deal, which will see two Friday night games per week featured on Apple TV’s streaming service, essentially removing access to those games from people already paying for all of their local team’s games. This is reportedly only one of multiple broadcasting deals MLB is set to announce once there are actual games to be broadcast. Apple forced their hands by announcing it themselves, and honestly, at this point, good for them for not buying into the spin machine.

This is, of course, in addition to the many other places where MLB is slicing and dicing the viewing experience. Ostensibly, this is to grow the game by putting it in places where new fans might be watching it for the first time. I guess.

In practice, it looks like a bunch of media conglomerates trying to line MLB’s pockets to force its fans to pay extra for their streaming services to access what was once included in one place. But, what do I know.

Now, the splintering of entertainment to multiple streaming services in order to nickel and dime the public into paying even more than they ever paid for cable (which, side note, punishes the people who actually stuck with cable even more harshly) is an issue unto itself and not really something I’m interested in getting in to too deeply on a baseball blog.

That said, it really is something to watch MLB cry poor and say they just don’t have the money to pay the players what they’re worth, only to watch them continue to sign broadcasting deals starting as soon as this season. You know, the season where they are currently canceling games in order to try to force the players to agree to a garbage deal.

It’s truly something to behold.

How many days has it been since the owners locked out the players?

We’ve been watching this clown show for 97 days. I’d honestly like to watch something else now.