MLB catches flak for tight control of viewing rights and related headaches with MLB.TV. Setting aside frustrating blackouts, some say that committing $105/yr for the Single Team package just feels too high. I don’t know what’s fair or not - not my lane.

But I do know that they offer the most demented upsell in the entirety of capitalism. For $2.50 more a month, you get access to all MLB games1. Obviously, they offer this because it doesn’t cost them squat and the extra couple bucks is an easy capture against fans willing to subscribe in the first place.

Step back a minute. Their 14% increase unlocks a positively prodigious 1,500% more content. That’s even more daffy when you consider that it’s virtually impossible to consume all the extra value your $2.50 gets you.

That’s because it’s impossible to watch a full season of baseball. I don’t mean because of paywalls, blackouts, or licensing nonsense. I mean mathematically - you simply cannot watch all the games each year.

Each team plays a whopping 162 games every single season. Across the 30 teams, that comes out to 2,430 games total. Postseason adds another ~30-50 games – we’ll call it 40, bringing us to 2,470 first pitches. Sports Illustrated says the average game length was 2 hours, 38 minutes in 2023. If we take 2.63 * 2,470, we expect each season to produce 6,496.1 hours of America’s Pastime, or 270.67 full 24 hour days.

But you’re a human being; regrettably, you can’t watch baseball 271 days straight. If you sleep 8 hours a day and do nothing else but watch MLB.TV, you’ll finish the season a few minutes into your 407th day. By then, you’re over a month behind on next year’s season! To watch every pitch in the celestially allotted 365 days, you need to watch at least 17 hours, 47 minutes, and 52.8 seconds every single day. That leaves a generous 6 hours and 12 minutes for non-baseball life, including sleep, exercise, and watching hockey.

Of course, with all that sleep you’ll miss the pre-season.

  1. Again, blackouts aside. Stop spoiling my fun. ↩︎