For those who, by virtue of where they live, are fortunate enough to watch every Dodger game on Sports Net LA (SNLA), the on-going dispute between multi-billion dollar Time Warner Cable and multi-billion dollar DirecTV is little more than a passing thought or an annoying daily distraction on Twitter or other social media networks. After all, they simply turn on their televisions and flip to the Dodgers very own 24/7/365 SNLA channel and their insatiable appetite for all things Dodgers is fulfilled. They get to watch their first place Dodgers with the highest payroll in all of baseball while listening to the golden voice of Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully.

But suppose… just suppose that the extremely long and insanely expensive 25-year/8.5 billion (or so) contract between Time Warner Cable (TWC) and the Dodgers were to… say… go belly up because of the fact that TWC and DirecTV cannot come to an agreement and the cable giant cannot pay the rent (so to speak) to the Dodgers, from which nearly all of those huge Dodgers salaries are paid. We’re talking a (roughly) $340 million per year bankroll for the next 25 years to finance a team whose 2014 payroll is $229,335,934 (and yes, the Dodgers are still paying Andruw Jones $3.2 million in 2014 – thanks a lot, Frank).

Without the huge TV rights deal with Time Warner Cable, it is quite possible that the Dodgers might not have been able to sign two-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw to his record seven-year/$215 million contract – among others. (Photo credit – Jayne Kamin-Oncea)

While it is highly unlikely that TWC with its $22 billion-ish annual revenue will ever go belly up, stranger things have happened. And to add another wrinkle to all of this, Comcast, the world’s largest cable company, is in the process of buying out TWC, so there’s that. And one has to believe that Comcast wants no part of an existing business dispute with DirecTV knowing full well that if they (Comcast and DirecTV) play well together, both stand to gain a fortune. Taking it one step further, it is well known that communications giant AT&T is in the process of buying out DirecTV, so there are other significant factors involved. Simply put, does Comcast or AT&T even care about the Dodgers’ SNLA channel?

LA Times writer Bill Shaikin, who has been following the TWC/DirecTV dispute from the very beginning, reported on Saturday that the recently concluded four-game Freeway Series between the Dodgers and Angels drew an all-time record viewership – that’s the good news. The bad news, for the Dodgers and TWC that is, is that nearly all of that viewership was on Fox Sports West (FSW), the Angels cable channel, and not on Time Warner Cable’s SNLA. So while the commercials on FSW (from where television companies make their money) were being watched by an estimated 270,000 households for each of the four games, TWC/SNLA commercials were being watched by an estimated 57,000 total households – and one has to ask one self: How long will these commercial sponsors be willing to pay for airtime on SNLA knowing that 70% of Dodger fans are unable to even see them?

Although 70% of Dodger fans cannot watch their team on TV, Time Warner Cable has given out tens of thousands of free T-shirts in an attempt to put pressure on DirecTV to carry their SportsNet LA channel.
(Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

There is, of course, MLB.TV which shows every Dodgers game, but for one enormous caveat – they black out every “in-market” game. And to add insult to injury, an in-market Dodger game includes Las Vegas (seriously), San Diego and Bakersfield (to name only a few areas) – all of which are more than 100 miles from Dodger Stadium. That being said, there are those who are creative enough to defeat the MLB.TV black outs by utilizing legitimate on-line services such as unblock-us.com or unlocator.com for as little as $5 a month (on top of their MLB.TV subscriptions, of course). And though MLB.com and its entire MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) company is filthy rich already, they would undoubtedly double their subscribership if they could get out from under the black out restrictions imposed by local cable and satellite providers.

It’s hard to believe that the TWC/DirecTV dispute will go on much longer, especially with politicians now getting involved – but then again, no one thought that it would have gone for the five months that it already has either. And while it is unlikely that TWC will renege on its contract obligations with the Dodgers, should they do so this mess could end up in yet another ugly and lengthy court battle – and the Dodgers don’t have a very good track record when it comes to those.