Forget the new rules — the b...

Forget pitch clocks and defensive posture; the biggest topic in baseball right now is the demise of regional sports networks and what it means for how fans will watch games in the future. Change is on the way, and it will have an impact on broadcasts, blackouts, and, eventually, the sport's economic structure.

MLB had its quarterly owners meetings in the commissioner's office in New York shortly after the World Series ended in November. At the end of the meeting, commissioner Rob Manfred informed media members that owners had received a lengthy report on the future of RSNs. He cited the league's recent relationships with streaming services such as Apple and Peacock, and projected "a lessening of that exclusivity" that has long been inherent in hefty RSN arrangements.

It was perhaps the least spectacular way he could've revealed that a remedy to one of baseball fans' major annoyances was on the way. MLB practically created streaming. MLB.tv's in-house technology was, in many ways, first and foremost. Nonetheless, blackouts were viewed as a structural inevitability from the start. In brief, RSNs pay teams a lot of money since they get the exclusive right to broadcast games in a specific area.

Making games available to local fans online would infringe on what the RSNs pay for, thus while MLB.tv technically made streaming games feasible, the current economic mechanisms compelled the site to black out games in local markets, thereby barring what is actually the target audience. (In addition, several parts of the country are subject to onerous overlapping blackouts, leaving them unable to watch the games on television.)

People's expectations about their freedom to watch anything they want, wherever they want, without the constraints or rigmarole of traditional television have skyrocketed in the two decades since the launch of MLB.tv. With content consumption becoming increasingly a la carte, blackouts have become a significant barrier to game growth and a major source of anxiety among fans.

Nevertheless, when local television deals became a greater part of clubs' revenue — FiveThirtyEight projections in 2020 estimated roughly 22% of the average team's overall income – the RSN-enabled blackouts became intractable. Even when cord cutting became a more serious threat to the cable bubble, it was difficult to see how MLB could convert to something more profitable and current in scope. MLB bid for the rights that eventually went to Sinclair/DSG at the time for what the league saw as an overpriced sum, and it has been monitoring the situation ever since.

"They have the capacity to handle the RSNs and have assured us that they have a strategy in place," MLBPA executive director Tony Clark recently told media members at a meeting. "What we don't know is anything beyond that and how it will influence the system. That will necessitate a discussion."

Clark, like Manfred, expressed optimism that, while the likely lengthy and painful breakup of the RSN model may cost clubs in the short term, "growth will still happen in the long run."

More precisely, growth will occur if MLB can transition from an already obsolete paradigm to something more agile and accessible. Right now, the league is publicly expressing confidence without providing many facts, making it tough to assess.