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Thirteen years ago, on the final Sunday in September, Skip Schumaker struck out. It was the last out in the last game of the regular season.
For the Dodgers, no big deal: They had won the National League West, and the playoffs were four days away.
More than 6 million customers in California will have Spectrum service.
How did this finally come to pass? Those channels no longer belong to Cox.
Charter Communications, the company responsible for getting SportsNet LA on as many cable, satellite and streaming options as possible, on Thursday closed its $34.5-billion purchase of Cox.
For Dodgers fans, the takeaway is this: It no longer matters that Cox did not want to pay Charter for the rights to air SportsNet LA. Charter made the 13 years of that moot by buying Cox.
Charter offers broadcast service under the Spectrum brand.
In 2013, with the team in the final year of its local television agreement with Fox Sports, the Dodgers announced it would launch a team-owned channel the following year.
Major League Baseball’s team owners want fans to think that the players are ultimately the ones responsible for broadcast blackouts and streaming headaches.
In exchange for the rights to market and distribute that SportsNet LA channel, Time Warner Cable agreed to pay the Dodgers $8.35 billion over 25 years. It was the last great regional sports network deal, with traditional broadcast audiences about to fragment amid the rise of streaming and cord-cutting.
The guaranteed rights fees are as sure of a revenue stream as anything in baseball, and the Dodgers’ success amid all that cash is one of the triggers for major league owners in their push for a salary cap.
No major Los Angeles outlet besides Time Warner Cable carried SportsNet LA until 2016, and then only because Charter bought Time Warner Cable. Even then, less than half the households in the Los Angeles market could get SportsNet LA.
“I think I can speak for a lot of people who will say this is, maybe, long overdue,” Dodgers star Justin Turner said then.
