Webisode

This article talks about the growth and expansion of the MLB website. Professional basebll used to have a reputation for being late in taking advantage of new technologies but in recent years that has changed. In 1995 Major League Baseball took its first step forward with the introduction of its official website, http://www.mlb.com/. This site was created by the league’s branch of management for interactive media, Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM). MLB.com was the first website to have a centralized location for all thirty teams online in hopes of “boosting interaction, sales, and media exposure.”
The main goals when originally designing the website have greatly been achieved. With eight to nine million hits a day during baseball season the website has surpassed many critics’ expectations. The site is also currently the number one supplier of streaming footage a year with 12,000 events a year excluding highlight footage. Another considerable advantage the site retains is that it can be read in English, Japanese, Korean and Spanish which makes the site accessible to many more people. MLB is also the only company who has sole right to games, clips and clubs and also with this views are able to see historical archives on the official site. Although there are other sites in which MLB.com has to compete with such as ESPN. Com and Yahoo! Sports, the official website has many extras which other sites can not gain access and this ensures the continued success of MLB.com.
I chose too use this article because it gives lots of information about the website itself and all it has to offer which is helpful to someone like me who is not a very technical person and does not have a lot of experience with this particular website. This article relates to our webisode because it is all about the MLB website which we will incorporate much into our project. Our main goal is to talk about the expansion of baseball throughout the media and the official website is a crucial part to baseball’s existence in the media. Before the internet and creation of MLB.com people could only watch the game on TV but now fans can watch online. They can find statistics at the drop of a hat, watch highlight shows incase they missed the game, watch classic games from the history achieves, and much more.
Although MLB has had major success it does still have competition with other websites trying to offer the same information. To combat this MLBAM has made deals with competitors which will also increase revenue. For example MLB made a deal with ESPN.com to put the logo of MLB links to all official scoreboards in hopes of expanding distribution for MLB.tv. Along with potential issues this specific article also gives some insight into what seems to be a growing trend, watching games online. With 1.1 million subscriptions sold last year it seems to be something for us to keep our eyes on. I believe this is something that will continue because the subscriptions themselves are not sold cheap at prices of $99-$120. If fans are willing to pay this much for games they can watch on TV for free there must be something special about this, although the subscription does also extras like highlight footage and live audio, I still can see a trend that will only increase with time.
Another reason I believe streaming is here to stay is because people already take advantage of watch regular television programs online with the help of sites such as hulu.com. As a society we want to watch our favorite shows but sometimes life gets in the way, a person may have to work late, or a college student might have a big test the next day; it is relaxing to know that if we miss an episode we can watch at a time convenient for us online. The same can be said for baseball fanatics. With a subscription to MLB.tv a person can watch a game they missed the night before or simply watch the provided highlight footage.
In connection with the book,page 335, the whole idea of streaming video and selling subscription is a great way to produce revenue but the website also makes money through online advertisements. With the subscriptions the website makes money because the viewers are paying for the content and with the added extras such as highlight footage the subscriptions is worth the money for a baseball fanatic, this goes off the concept of the pay-per-view model. As far as online advertising the MLB made a smart decision when they decided to partner up with Yahoo! Sports because of ‘Yahoo!’s incredible distribution capability ad advertising ability will provide an expected 20-30% growth rate over the next three year deal.” By partnering with an already successful website they can take advantage of extra online advertisements. With all the success MLB.com has already achieved I see nothing but even better things to come from the website. MLB.com is a great example of the league taking advantage of the media available.
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