Now that pitchers and catchers have reported and baseball is in the air, let’s take a look at the MLB Extra Innings package.

Extra Innings is an out of market sports package distributed by most digital cable and satellite tv providers in North America. The package allows its subscribers to see up to 60 out of market Major League Baseball games a week using local and national television networks.

Currently, the only major satellite tv company to offer MLB Extra Innings package is  DirecTV. In March, 2007 DirecTV signed an all exclusive deal with MLB, but that offer was met with much critism from fans as well as anti-trust complaints from politicians (mainly Massachusets senator John Kerry) so by April 1 of that year MLB decided to offer the package to the cable networks as well as Dish Network with the stipulation that the companies would have to pick up MLBs new Baseball Channel (set to debut in 2009). When the smoke cleared an agreement was reached with the cable entity iN DEMAND. Cable providers that had the iN DEMAND sevice could now offer the Extra Innings package to its customers. Some of the cable companies that offer iN DEMAND/MLB Extra Innings are: Time Warner, Cox, ComCast, Charter among others. Dish Network opted not to carry the Extra Innings package, you can see an explanation from them here.

Baseball game broadcasts of a major league team in its home market are blacked out in that area if the same game is on the Extra Innings schedule. In almost all cases, these games are available on a local channel or cable channel anyway.

Nationally-broadcast games on Fox, Espn or TBS are not available on Extra Innings.

FOX TV has exclusive broadcasting rights for Saturday afternoon games. Any game starting prior to 7:00 Eastern time on Saturdays will not be broadcast on MLB Extra Innings.

The ESPN Networks have exclusive broadcast rights for Sunday evening games. Any game starting after 8:00 PM Eastern time on Sundays will not be broadcast on MLB Extra Innings. ESPN also televises a number of other games throughout the week. These, however, are not blacked out.

Popularity: 95% [?]