Baseball
Links for 2010-03-11
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"Speaking on condition of anonymity, highly placed industry sources are telling HRI there is no way Monmouth Park can reasonably expect to double its handle, something it would need to do to remain viable, given a purse structure that will distribute an average $1-million daily." As long as New Jersey is experimenting, why not court bettors as aggressively as connections? Slash takeout, offer free data, target whales.
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A bit of candor: "If this is the death for the small horsemen, it’s because he doesn’t have the kind of horse that America wants to bet on."
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"The goal is simple: to replicate the company's smashing success in the financial world, where the $1,500-a-month Bloomberg terminals are in many ways the lifeblood of the industry, into the sports world. Bloomberg is starting with baseball. The company has just launched its fantasy product, which costs $31.95 for the year." Watching with interest …
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More details from the December 2009 deal announcement: "For the MLBAM-Bloomberg product being sold to MLB teams, Bloomberg will take MLBAM’s real-time statistical feed from every game, as well as location-based data already being developed in partnership with Sportvision, and apply an almost limitless amount of analytical tools." Neat! Visuals (via).
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"Here’s my point: businesses don’t get to pick the timetable for when their preferred model takes a permanent dirt nap. It’s insane to me that these businesses’ fans see this so much more clearly than their actual stakeholders do. The fans want desperately to see these places stay alive, and many … pay tons of actual cash … to support that."
Baseball Advances
… in online video this opening day:
While TV networks are still figuring out the best way to put last night’s sitcom online, MLB is about to stream a season of more than 2,000 live games in hi-definition with more features than any cable box.
Beyond pausing and rewinding live games as you can with a DVR, subscribers can watch up to four games at a time with “mosaic” picture-in-picture; select different audio channels, including synced-up radio commentary streams; and follow their favorite players (or fantasy team) as they play their games, including live video peeks.
I’m so envious. And high-quality, feature-rich streaming online video isn’t even all baseball fans can look forward to this season. According to MLB Advanced Media CEO Bob Bowman, MLB’s super At Bat iPhone app, which I’ve gushed about before, could gain live video streams this summer. “We would love to do live games on the iPhone,” Bowman told Silicon Alley Insider. “I think people would watch. A whole game? Probably not. But ten minutes?”
What other live sporting event might people watch for ten minutes or five on a mobile device? Maybe … a horse race?
Building the infrastructure to deliver such products, though, seems beyond the industry at this point. MLBAM began in 2000 with $75 million pooled by 30 clubs; in 2007, it brought in $450 million. (Proving, at least in one case, it’s possible to make money from content online.) It would take an unprecedented level of cooperation and investment from within racing to pull off a similar (if smaller-scaled accomplishment). Considering the difficulty the various factions and entities have had coming together to do something truly important, I expect no ambitious tech initiatives launching in the near future.
(Thanks for the Insider link alert, Pull the Pocket.)
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Jessica Chapel is a writer, editor, and web producer living in Cambridge, MA. Railbird is a thoroughbred horse racing blog published continuously since June 2004. More ›
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