If Rob Manfred isn’t careful, people might actually start liking him. Attendance took a big leap across Major League Baseball this past season — unless you’re looking at Tuesday’s Rays/Rangers playoff game — as game times were trimmed by over 20 minutes and steals hit a 36-year high. The next step may be to ensure that as many people as possible can actually watch those games without being blacked out.
“Whatever exclusivity we give to a particular cable provider, we ought to be able to go side-by-side with a digital product so that people are not blacked out,” Manfred told the Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast.