It remains unclear if and when the 2020 MLB season will get underway, but a significant portion of the Los Angeles Dodgers fan base woke up to outstanding news on Wednesday — DirecTV will be broadcasting the team’s games going forward.
The Dodgers have finally reached an agreement with DirecTV to broadcast games through the satellite provider, according to ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne. The dispute was one of the longest running in sports, with Dodgers games not having been broadcast on DirecTV dating all the way back to 2014.
This ends one of the longest, most frustrating cable TV disputes. There’s obviously no baseball games being played for a bit, but Dodgers fans who have Direct TV and its subsidiaries will finally be able to watch their games https://t.co/nv0UZP9P7H
— Ramona Shelburne (@ramonashelburne) April 1, 2020
The Dodgers signed a 25-year TV rights deal with Time Warner Cable, which is now known as Spectrum, back in 2013. Time Warner created a channel called SportsNet LA to air Dodgers games, but the rights fees were so expensive that other providers chose not to carry the games.
A huge portion of the population in the Los Angeles area uses DirecTV as its TV provider, and those fans were unable to watch Dodgers games during one of the team’s most successful runs. Legendary broadcaster Vin Scully was even blacked out from watching the games at one point, and ratings for some of the most important moments in franchise history have been shockingly low due to fans not having any way to watch.
At a time when the sports world is on pause due to the coronavirus pandemic, many members of Dodgers Nation have something to look forward to.
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