{"id":6220,"date":"2018-01-31T21:14:16","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T02:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/how-major-league-baseball-has-turned-the-national-pastime-into-a-new-world-innovator\/"},"modified":"2018-01-31T21:14:16","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T02:14:16","slug":"how-major-league-baseball-has-turned-the-national-pastime-into-a-new-world-innovator","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/how-major-league-baseball-has-turned-the-national-pastime-into-a-new-world-innovator\/","title":{"rendered":"How Major League Baseball has turned the National Pastime into a New World Innovator"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author\u2019s note: I was going to write about how the Patriots have used \u201ctechnology\u201d such as video cameras and deflated footballs to make them winners, but I figured it was a bit off topic.<\/em><\/p>\n

MLB Advanced Media, described by Forbes as \u201cthe biggest media company you\u2019ve never heard of\u201d is the digital arm of Major League Baseball (\u201cMLB\u201d), one of the four major sports league in the United States.\u00a0 Baseball is known as a traditionalist sport that has been more immune to technological innovation relative to other sports.\u00a0 However, despite this conventionalism, in terms of MLB Advanced Media baseball has fully outperformed their peers.\u00a0 MLB Advanced Media has become a benchmark for professional sports leagues media arms through their innovation streaming technology, BAMTech.<\/p>\n

BAMTech was able to master their proof of concept of live streaming sporting events before any other sports league or any other media company.\u00a0 They accomplished this goal during the strenuous baseball season which consists of long games over the course of more than half the year \u2013 this volume was really how BAMTech proved itself as a long-term standard-bearer.\u00a0 They have consistently streamed games to tens of millions of viewers with no huge glitches or technical errors while offering start-of-the-art advertising technology.\u00a0 Viewers have provided BAMTech with rave reviews, and the MLB owners were quite happy with their incoming revenue checks the service provided.\u00a0 MLB Advanced Media only has around 850 employees, but the team has been intensely focused on the viewing experience for baseball fans in order to provide everyone with access to the games they want to see in real-time.\u00a0 There are no public shareholders to appease (though it doesn\u2019t hurt to have the owners on your side), only the fans.<\/p>\n

BAMTech also started streaming games earlier than the other sports leagues, insightfully understanding the value of such a service to MLB.\u00a0 This foresight was overlooked by other leagues who focused more on TV rights as those were the main cash cows of that time period (and still are, for the most part).\u00a0 BAMTech understood that future fans would want to be able to see their favorite team from anywhere, even if they weren\u2019t in that particular local market or their team wasn\u2019t playing on national TV.\u00a0 Their early success led to contracts outside of MLB, which allowed them to test and improve their technology through different platforms including WWE, Fox Sports, and Hulu.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most striking evidence of MLB being a \u201cwinner\u201d in the digital space is the fact that Disney paid $1 billion to acquire a 33% stake in BAMTech (they increased this stake in August 2017 by paying an additional $1.58 billion).\u00a0 Disney will use the technology to launch their proprietary streaming service to compete with Netflix.\u00a0 Bob Iger emphasized the need to possess the \u201cability to stream on a scaled basis\u201d.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty incredible to think that MLB, which maintained its non-profit status until 2007, was somehow able to develop superior technology to what a large corporation such as Disney was able to develop internally.\u00a0 I believe this achievement was possible due to their leaner organizational structure and dedicated focus on creating the best streaming technology for their consumers, instead of focusing solely on profitability as if they were a publicly-traded corporation.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see if Disney can leverage BAMTech to be a winner itself as it repositions itself for a direct-to-consumer push.\u00a0 The start-up costs for this new venture will be quite large, and Netflix is a formidable competitor with a first-mover advantage.\u00a0 There has also been speculation that Disney will sign up other media companies (its competitors, more or less) to use the BAMTech technology and generate revenue from there.\u00a0 It\u2019s a complex and competitive space with no shortage of drama and storylines.\u00a0 However, I think a lot of these big organizations can learn something from how MLB Advanced Media approached the streaming opportunity and apply it to some of their new technologies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sources:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2016\/08\/09\/how-disney-mlb-advanced-media-deal-sets-them-up-for-the-future.html<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu\/docview\/1950036038?accountid=11311<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/mlb.nbcsports.com\/2017\/08\/09\/disney-to-give-mlb-another-1-58-billion-for-bamtech-the-players-will-see-none-of-it\/<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/maurybrown\/2014\/07\/07\/the-biggest-media-company-youve-never-heard-of\/#7f7318f01cef<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Major League Baseball Advanced Media has successfully developed the market-leading live streaming technology through an innovative, viewer-focused approach <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2010,"featured_media":6221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[1904,1082,812,653,1267,57],"class_list":["post-6220","hck-submission","type-hck-submission","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baseball","category-live-streaming","category-mlb","category-sports","category-streaming-media","category-television","hck-taxonomy-industry-sports","hck-taxonomy-country-united-states"],"connected_submission_link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/assignment\/digital-winners-losers-2018\/","yoast_head":"\nHow Major League Baseball has turned the National Pastime into a New World Innovator - Digital Innovation and Transformation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/how-major-league-baseball-has-turned-the-national-pastime-into-a-new-world-innovator\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Major League Baseball has turned the National Pastime into a New World Innovator - 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