[oplav]

The leagues did. I was never disputing that fact.

There's a common misconception that blackouts are in place to protect attendance, but that is (typically) not the case. The Chicago Blackhawks did that for a while (under ownership of Bill Wirtz who explicitly thought that showing local games would hurt attendance) but when Rocky Wirtz took over the team in 2007, he reversed that policy.

Blackouts exist to protect local media rights, which you correctly pointed out were sold to them by the league/teams.

You'll see though that many local sports networks are in financial trouble, and leagues are looking for ways to reacquire the rights to stream directly to fans.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/35668388/rob-manfred-mlb...