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Over the top streaming of events could alter sports landscape

In a move years in the making, ROOT Sports Northwest is offering Mariners fans who are “authenticated pay TV viewers’’ the chance to live-stream games on their mobile phones.

This isn’t the be-all, end-all package one might expect — especially for Seattle-based fans that pick up ROOT as part of a Comcast subscription. Yes, you actually need a cable subscription to stream the games, and our local Comcast platform has chosen not to participate.

But this is a start for some fans in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. Compared with where Major League Baseball was just a couple of years ago on the topic of a Regional Sports Network (RSN) offering live streams via mobile phones, this is a seismic event.