Blackouts these days aren’t about filling seats, it’s all about television rights. Regional sports networks buy exclusive broadcast rights to games for particul

Blackouts these days aren’t about filling seats, it’s all about television rights. Regional sports networks buy exclusive broadcast rights to games for particular teams in some region and that results in a blackout. In Hawaii, for example, most of the west coast baseball teams are often blacked out in MLB.tv because some broadcaster has picked up the rights for those teams. Nobody from Hawaii is going to fly to Seattle to see a game because of a blackout.