The year is 1948. You are a Cubs fan and the newfangled invention of television has begun to bring your team’s games live into your home. And you can watch all 154 Cubs games on one channel!
Wait, no, you can’t, because there’s no way to transmit live pictures from away games. WGN-TV, which began broadcasting the Cubs’ home schedule in 1948, carried only home games, 78 of them that year (including one tie). The first Cubs road game broadcast by WGN-TV wouldn’t come until 1958 and there wouldn’t be more than a handful until 1968.
In 1968, in fact, the Cubs televised 145 games on WGN-TV, or 89.5 percent of the schedule. Not only was that their most ever, it was by far the most for any team. Many teams in the late 1960s were still in the mindset that televising games would cost them paid attendance, and while that might seem strange to you, 50 years ago, before huge TV rights deals, most revenue for MLB teams was from ticket sales.
Now the year is 1984. For the first time, NBC-TV has signed a deal with MLB that gave them exclusivity for their Saturday “Game of the Week.” Prior to 1984, Saturday national games on NBC could also be broadcast on local outlets. Interestingly, the very first NBC exclusive Cubs game was the famous “Sandberg Game” on June 23, 1984, and that was the first Cubs game at Wrigley Field not televised on WGN-TV since the station went on the air in 1948.
So you could watch all but the occasional NBC exclusive game on one channel!
Wait, no, you still can’t. Because in 1984, only 147 of the 162 games were televised on WGN-TV. A handful of others were on NBC, and some games weren’t televised at all — mainly games from the West Coast, and occasionally from Montreal (because of the expense of hiring a crew and transmission costs from there).
In the heyday of national cable exposure on WGN-TV, from 1982-97, an average of 142 Cubs games per year were televised by WGN. (That average would have been 146 if not for games cancelled by the 1994-95 strike.) By the end of this era, NBC and CBS both had national exclusive games that sometimes involved the Cubs, and in 1990 ESPN began its national Sunday Night Baseball package, which the Cubs usually appeared on four or five times a year.
The year is 1998. The Cubs began to air some games on a regional sports network which was first called Fox Sportsnet Chicago, then Comcast Sportsnet Chicago, then NBC Sports Chicago. So you can’t watch games in one place in the 1998-2013 time frame, either; during those years the Cubs averaged 64 games a year on WGN-TV (both local and national cable) and about 80-85 a year on the RSN. The rest were on Fox-TV’s national/regional Saturday games or ESPN’s Sunday night franchise.
In 2015, the Cubs signed their final contract with WGN-TV, a deal that put just 45 games a year on the Cubs’ flagship local station. At this time, the WGN you saw on national cable rebranded itself as WGN America and got out of the sports broadcasting business. This was one of the most confusing times to find Cubs TV broadcasts, as in addition to WGN, games aired on NBC Sports Chicago, ABC7 Chicago, WCIU-TV, Fox-TV and ESPN. Here’s an example of the TV broadcast schedule (from 2019) I posted here every year during that time frame, and you can see how you had to pay careful attention to what channel the game was on. Those TV broadcast schedule articles from 2015-19 were the most-read articles on this site every year for that five-year period.
When Marquee Sports Network launched in 2020, one of the things that they promoted was “having all the Cubs games in one place.” And with local games on WGN, ABC7, NBC Sports Chicago and WCIU, this was welcome... even if not 100 percent true.
Because even with Marquee, you STILL can’t watch all 162 games in one place, nor was that ever possible, nor was it ever even intended to be possible. MLB has national contracts with Fox-TV, ESPN, and in recent years, streaming platforms Peaco*ck, Apple TV+ and now Roku, which carry games on an exclusive basis. Those channels aren’t going to pay the big money they do to MLB — money that helps pay player salaries, incidentally — if they don’t have exclusive rights. Over the last three years Marquee has carried an average of 148 games (151 in 2021, 146 in 2022, 148 in 2023) games, which was more than 91 percent of the Cubs schedule for those three years. They have plans for about 152 this year. No team can ask for, or get, much more than that on a single channel.
Which brings me to the present, and the point of this history lesson. There was, as has been the case for most recent MLB deals with streaming services, much gnashing of teeth when MLB’s “Sunday Leadoff” deal with Roku was officially announced Monday, with exactly one Cubs game on their list. Not only that, but Roku is not requiring a subscription or any per-game fees to watch their games, AND there will be no blackouts. In general, regarding streaming platforms, everyone reading this site has an internet connection. While I am aware some internet speeds aren’t fast enough for streaming, most are and so everyone here should be able to watch games on Roku, either on a Roku device, any smart TV or on their website. Here’s info on how to watch Roku games, which I will also post in any series/game preview here if the Cubs are involved — just one, as noted, for this year.
So in my view, the complaint department should be closed. Between Fox, ESPN, Apple and Roku, there are likely going to be about 12-14 Cubs games not on Marquee (or MLB.TV, for those of you outside the Cubs market territory) this year.
I’m going to interrupt this wall of text with the market territory map, which hopefully someday soon will be a thing of the past:
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24360516/mlb_territorial_map_2023.jpeg "A few thoughts about baseball TV broadcasts and the multiple ways they are distributed (1)")
Okay, back to the story: Fox is an over-the-air channel, free for anyone to watch. ESPN requires a cable or satellite subscription, this is not new. Apple does require a subscription and so far this year there has been exactly one Cubs game on Apple (April 12 at Seattle). Through the end of June there aren’t any more, and there might be one or two more later in the year.
Would it be nice if MLB games were all on one platform? Sure, absolutely, no argument from me. It would be nice if all the TV you want to watch was all on one platform, which it almost certainly isn’t. Someday perhaps MLB will deliver all the baseball you want, without blackouts, with one delivery system. I know they’d eventually like to have it that way.
But for now, I believe all the angst over a few games where (apart from Apple) you likely already have access (ESPN) or can watch for free (Roku) is misplaced. Even the “old days” where you think you saw every game in one place wasn’t really that way. We live in a golden age of baseball TV where every single game is televised somehow. It just takes a bit more time and effort to watch each broadcast.
