It's Official

Baseball, DirecTV finalize agreement

Major League Baseball announced its $700 million, seven-year agreement with DirecTV on Thursday and said the deal contains a provision that allows its "Extra Innings" package of out-of-market games to remain on cable television if the other incumbent providers agree to match the terms.

The president of one of those providers, iN Demand's Robert Jacobson, immediately said those terms were impossible for his company to agree to and called it a "de facto exclusive deal."
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Baseball said the agreement, which must be approved by owners, includes a provision allowing the package to remain on iN Demand Networks LLC and EchoStar Communications Corp.'s Dish Network "at consistent rates and carriage requirements" if a deal can be worked out this month.

"In response to those concerns of our fans, baseball has negotiated with DirecTV to offer the package to the incumbents," DuPuy said. "I hope that those fans who have been directing their concerns to us over the last several weeks will now encourage their cable carriers to in fact enlist for this package."

This can be translated into: Stop bugging us!

DirecTV will make The Baseball Channel available when the network launches in 2009, and DirecTV will be a minority partner in the network.

"The provision also requires the incumbents to agree to carriage rights to the MLB Channel proportionally equivalent to DirecTV's commitment," baseball said in a statement. "Should the incumbents decide not to match DirecTV's commitment, the MLB `Extra Innings' package will be exclusive to DirecTV."

That appears to mean Time Warner Entertainment-Advance/Newhouse Partnership, Comcast iN Demand Holdings Corp and Cox Communications Holdings Inc. - iN Demand's owners - would have to agree to carry The Baseball Channel on the same tier as DirecTV and not a narrower one.

Again, this worked so well for the NFL Network.

Then, there is this stinger at the end of the AP article.

Baseball has said displaced subscribers could buy the package from MLB.com, although the signal is not as good in many cases.