I would buy Extra Innings and Sunday Ticket if it were a reduced fee to watch only my teams (Mariners and Seahawks). Otherwise it is just too expensive to justify. Why doesn’t DTV offer that? I figure it is one of 3 reasons:
Simply not technically possible or feasible to show one game to a single customer. Problem with that theory is I’m sure the technology has existed for years.
MLB and NFL won’t let them.
DTV thinks it will make more money with the current system.
Almost certainly (3), but not quite for the reasons you might think. It’s easier to bundle all games into one package and charge a level price than break it out into harder to manage pieces that won’t be as profitable. I’d bet that even if it were offered, your local-teams channel would not have much of a price advantage over the whole package.
I had MLB.tv this season until it sank in that (1) most Giants games were still on west-coast times and (2) nearly all Red Sox games would be blacked out. So my dream package would involve two things: time-shifting, which would be more possible than the second thing, owners that weren’t insanely greedy. As if there’s been an empty seat in Boston for decades.
You can definitely time shift with MLB. I do it all the time. You can pick half-inning by half-inning which to watch as well. Unless you mean time shift the Giants’ games to earlier which of course is currently impossible according to physics. If you’re blacked-out for local games, you get them about 90 minutes after the same ends.
The NHL package is the one I can’t understand. You local games are available only 48 hours later. That’s some serious black-out.
Even though the official sellout streak only ended this year, there were empty seats to be had at Fenway for the past few years. It’s always been possible to get seats for games, just not always through the box office.
My impression is that most folks who buy the Sunday Ticket package watch lots of games all over the US. The vast majority of folks who only watch a specific team’s games are located in the home market and have access to the games already. There’s just not enough of a market for people to get a single team that don’t live in that team’s home market.