Major League Baseball’s Opening Day took place yesterday, with every team in action in the opener for the first time since the 1960s. As fans across the country tuned into their favorite teams, Texas Rangers fans experienced an issue with Bally Sports Southwest. That caught the ire of 105.3 The Fan host RJ Choppy.
Shan & RJ read message after message from listeners saying they were unable to watch the Rangers season opener against the Philadelphia Phillies.
“We need to get to the bottom of this Bally thing,” co-host Shan Shariff said. “This blew up on my social media.”
“My understanding that there’s a streaming problem Bally is having right now?” Choppy said.
“Yesterday, people were unable to watch the game on the app, even if they were connected on their home wifi,” explained co-host Bobby Belt. “Bally was saying — and I assume this has to do with the Diamond Sports collapse — that they don’t have the licensing to stream their games. I think people just expected it to be there because they had the rights with basketball, but they don’t with baseball. So people just showed up expecting to see it, so whenever you try to watch it through the app, you can’t get it.”
Shariff then read several messages from listeners claiming the followed the steps from the Texas Rangers website verbatim to ensure they were properly subscribed to the broadcasts, and that still didn’t solve their issues.
“Baseball has always had odd blackout restrictions,” Choppy added. “Maybe not odd, but they get in the way. I get the MLB Extra Innings package. It’s $120. My son uses it. He’ll go to the app. I went to the app this morning. It’s got a lot of things you can do on it…I can’t watch a Ranger game on it. I have to watch it on my TV at home or the DirecTV Stream on my phone. That worked, but I hate that people can’t watch these games. We don’t care about your problems, Bally. We just wanna watch the games. It’s a mess.”
