With each season seemingly bringing more battles and confusion over how to stream Major League Baseball games — this advertisement is from 2016 — the Yankees are now likely to be unavailable on the YouTube TV platform because of an impasse with Sinclair Broadcast Group. (Photo by Richard Levine/Corbis via Getty Images)

One of the first stories I planned to do when I started this job exactly a year ago was on the state of the MLB.tv blackouts. I put out a call on Twitter for testimonials of frustration and received over 100 detailed emails.

They were lashing out against the absurdities of certain far-ranging and overlapping blackouts that leave pockets of the country unable to watch as many as six different teams on the app, sometimes despite having no actual option to watch those teams on local cable. Or else they were lamenting the more intrinsic, common issue of wanting to cut the cable cord while continuing to watch their hometown team. Alienating people who have that kind of fervent eagerness to engage with baseball — specifically by preventing them from doing so — seemed like the epitome of MLB’s oft short-sighted self-sabotage. It felt urgent.

Here’s what happened to that story: Someone at actual Major League Baseball suggested I just get YouTube TV in addition to my MLB.tv subscription. I did that and it solved my personal problems with accessing almost every game for all 30 baseball teams. And so I didn’t write that story in part because the solution seemed simple enough but more honestly because, pretty quickly, the idea of not being able to consume enough baseball content seemed very far away from my life.

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But now YouTube TV might not have Yankees games this year because it has been unable to reach an agreement with Sinclair Broadcast Group, which last year purchased 21 regional sports networks (14 of which are the local outlet for MLB teams) and the right to control Yankees’ and Cubs’ distribution. YES Network’s website says it is “not optimistic” about its future on YouTube TV and suggests switching to a different streaming service. Probably that’s what I’ll do. Adding the $55 per month Hulu with Live TV to my growing collection of subscription streaming services. It’s a luxury and necessity of this particular job.

But if I didn’t work in baseball? Honestly? I’d keep the MLB.tv, keep YouTube TV and just not watch the Yankees. If I had a limited budget and lived in the blackout zone for my favorite team I wouldn’t bother with MLB.tv at all, losing touch with the rest of the league. If Sinclair jacked up the prices for pay-TV providers so high that it stopped carrying my local RSN, I would still try to go to games and seek out highlights but likely my interest would wane. If I was a Canadian who was used to watching the Blue Jays on MLB.tv and suddenly that was no longer available, I might let my account lapse. Maybe I would subscribe to Sportsnet NOW instead, but the prospect of paying roughly the same amount for one team’s games as I had been for all 30 is a pretty strong deterrent. Plus: not creating a new account is so much easier than creating a new account.

Maybe I just wouldn’t bother because it’s a golden age of scripted television and I can just get Netflix instead.

If I were a kid growing up today in a household where the people who pay the bills weren’t invested in chasing local broadcasts across platforms year-to-year, probably I wouldn’t become a baseball fan at all.

The point is: just because a solution exists for fans who are dedicated enough to seek one out doesn’t mean it’s enough to grow the game. It likely isn’t enough to sustain the same audience either. The YES website will redirect people who bother to check the YES website to Hulu or AT&T Now — but what about everyone else?

The entire television economy as it relates to sports rights holders is a convoluted thesis-level topic that has become only more opaque as the industry evolves, but some platitudes hold true even at their most oversimplified: Sports broadcasts rights are incredibly valuable to television companies because lots of people watch live sports. They’re valuable because they’re popular. But that popularity is dependent on accessibility.

View photos Amid a proliferation of streaming services and the dwindling dominance of cable, baseball's TV business model risks alienating or missing casual fans. (Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images) More

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