The Aaron Judge streaming saga and who is to blame
New York Yankees announcer Kristie Ackert had this to say about the saga that sees Apple TV to stream the possible record breaking home run game, "So if Aaron Judge ties or breaks the iconic #Yankees record on Friday night they won’t have one familiar TV announcer because it’s on Apple? #Yankees fans do not deserve that. MLB deserves the embarrassment though."
No matter the sport, to be locking up games to a single network results in situations like this. You can't blame the streaming platforms as they are driven by profits and these situations work perfectly for subscriber growth, so ultimately the blame is with the governing bodies, in this case MLB.
Apple recently announced that they have locked up the MLS for 10 years, but again, is Apple really to blame for doing what they are expected to do (to maximize profits), or does the blame lay soley with the governing bodies.
Picture the current scenario, to watch your team play it's games you need to have multiple streaming accounts. Given Apple is currently showing games for free (providing you have an apple account) it doesn't sound too bad, but when these platforms start charging users and number of platforms with exclusive rights grows even more, that's when we start to have real issues.
I think the only ones that can fix this are the fans. The more fans that express their frustration with the way things are going, the more the governing bodies AND the local government will listen and enact policies to stop this from happening.
The streaming platforms aren't there to represent the interests of local fans, in this case Yankee fans. The New York Yankees and to a lesser extent the MLB are there to represent local fans. So, the best path for fans is to pressure club owners and players to put pressue on the governing bodies to start having real conversations about what can be done to stop this from happening in the future...or in the case of the MLS, in 10 years once the exclusive Apple contract has expired.
