Web Expanded
Link-by-link guided tour of MLB.com

Major League Baseball takes an early lead in the online video sweepstakes.

As impressive as those numbers are in the baseball world, the numbers being posted on Major League Baseball's official website, www.mlb.com, are just as impressive in the Internet world. At a time when content providers are still struggling to generate consistent online revenue, MLB.com has hit a home run of its own. The site has been cash-flow positive since January 2002 — less than two years after its June 2000 launch, when MLB's 30 team owners voted unanimously to centralize all of baseball's Internet operations in a single online clearinghouse. Last year, the 31 websites combined to generate between $80 million and $90 million, with a net profit in the $5 million to $6 million range, according to published reports.

The sites are managed by MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM), the interactive media and Internet company collectively owned by all 30 teams. MLBAM has built a three-legged revenue model based on e-commerce, sponsorships, and subscriptions to multimedia — including video — content.

While it's nothing new for anyone to make money from online ads and merchandise — ticket sales and team gear in MLB.com's case — making money from subscriptions to online content has been a tough sell for everyone. And yet, last year MLB.com sold 300,000 subscriptions to its various multimedia products — from live audio and video of games to realtime video highlights inside live box scores — and expects to attract more than one million subscribers this year.

Dinn Mann, senior vice president and editor-in-chief of MLBAM, says MLB.com is successful in part because baseball is tailor-made to take advantage of the Internet's interactive nature. “There's no other sport with 2,700 games a year and up to 15 games a day,” he says. “MLB is unique because it's unscripted and there's a constant flow of content.”

MLBAM does not shoot or record game footage itself; audio and video feeds come from MLB's radio and TV broadcast partners. Among MLB.com's original video content, however, is this studio show covering the announcement of the 2004 class of Hall of Fame inductees, produced in realtime.

The bread and butter of MLB.com is instant access to the latest baseball news, scores, and highlights. Between two million and three million baseball fans visit the 31 sites each day during the six-month baseball season. During the 26 days of the playoffs last fall, 65 million visitors viewed more than 560 million pages. Currently only about one in 10 page views on MLB.com leads to multimedia content. Nevertheless, Mann says revenue generated from multimedia content is steadily gaining ground on e-commerce revenue, which accounts for about 35 percent to 40 percent of the site's total revenue. “E-commerce is easily the most lucrative revenue stream,” he says. “But over time we see that changing — whether that happens in the next couple of years or five years from now, I don't know.”

To facilitate the change, MLBAM is investing heavily in multimedia content. Last year, it produced more than 40,000 hours of live online programming. “We are the world's largest producer of live online content,” Mann says simply.

Although MLB.com broadcasts a live online audio feed of all games and a live online video feed of more than 250 games, MLBAM does not shoot or record the content itself. The audio and video feeds come from MLB's radio and TV broadcast partners. MLB.com holds exclusive online broadcast rights to all MLB games, although some video clips are licensed to content partners.

As the games are recorded in the 30 major league ballparks, an MLBAM employee, known as a “stringer,” sits in the press box and enters data about every event on the baseball field — from balls and strikes to pitch location to where a batted ball is hit — much as a scorekeeper does. This information feeds all of the data on the website, and all statistics syndicated to MLB content partners.

Back in MLBAM's offices in New York City, video footage is brought down via satellite, and “loggers” sitting in front of video monitors metatag each event. While the stringers are responsible for accurately recording all events on the field, loggers are concerned only with the speed and timing of the events, marrying the facts with the footage. All of this happens in near realtime, and clips are stored into a homegrown digital asset management system running on Solaris servers from Sun Microsystems. The database of video clips is immediately searchable for online surfers on a pitch-by-pitch basis. A highlight package, known as a Condensed Game, is automatically generated from the database using the data from the stringer and logger. The Condensed Game packages include all pitches in a game that result in action, are generally about 20 minutes in length, and are available online about 90 minutes after a game ends.

Video producers develop additional highlight packages and post-game shows in MLBAM's offices. As clips are generated, the producers begin to compile storyboards. The footage is produced and encoded in one of eight Adobe Premiere workstations, which are in constant use during the baseball season. From here, the video footage is placed on the MLB.com content delivery network for streaming purposes.

On March 15, MLBAM announced that it is partnering this year with Akamai for content distribution and streaming of audio and video. Akamai operates a global network of 14,000 servers in 70 countries. In February MLBAM and Akamai began implementing the system, which helps balance MLB.com's traffic loads. At press time, they expected to have it up and running in time for Opening Day of the 2004 season, March 28.

In addition to its premium multimedia content, MLB offers MLB.com Radio, a free audio webcast. Users can interact directly with show hosts via email or AOL Instant Messager.

Joe Choti, chief technology officer at MLBAM, says after the switches were installed last year, there was a significant improvement in website responsiveness. “During the World Series alone, our site saw an unprecedented improvement,” he says. “NetScaler's high-performance technology proved instrumental in enabling us to provide our viewers an optimal user experience without any interruption.”

For acquisition and encoding, MLBAM partners with British Telecom, which operates MLB.com's two primary acquisition facilities in Los Angeles and Washington D.C. On occasion, MLBAM will send teams of two or three people into the field for live, remote encodes. In this application, video is sent directly to Akamai's content delivery network for streaming. Pinnacle StreamFactory X2 systems are used for remote encodes of events like live draft-day coverage and all-star game press conferences.

While MLB.com's features have proven very popular with baseball fans, MLBAM is constantly looking for new ways to implement technology in an effort to broaden baseball's already considerable appeal.

This year, it plans to roll out its first wireless services. At some point in the season, a baseball fan could be walking down the street in Manhattan when he's notified via his mobile phone that there are still tickets available for an afternoon game at Yankee Stadium. MLBAM also plans to roll out Internet Cafes at two ballparks this season.

On a more cosmetic front, the MLB.com site will get a slight face-lift on Opening Day. “The challenge at this point is to simplify our content presentation and make our subscribers aware of all the options they have without overwhelming them,” Mann says. “Baseball is such a great game with such great atmosphere, we just want to make the site an extension of that. We're trying to put the stadium experience at the fingertips of as many fans as possible.”