MLB Advanced Media

History

Major League Baseball Advanced Media was formed in 2000 by Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to consolidate online rights and ticket sales for Major League Baseball teams. MLBAM was to be capitalized with $120 million with $1 million per team contributed each year for four years. The company hired an outside consulting firm to build its websites which failed to work properly, which lead them to develop their own tech. In 2002, the attempt to run a streaming package around Japanese player Ichiro Suzuki of the Mariners to little success. With these failures, MLB Advance Media used its ticket rights to get an advance from Ticketmaster in mid 2002.

With its $10 million advance from Ticketmaster, MLBAM used it meet payroll and make another run at video. A Texas Rangers - New York Yankees game was produced and broadcast online on August 26, 2002. The company continued to tweak online broadcasting. A nine-game pennant race package was sold two week later followed by a $19.95 postseason package. Concurrently the 2003 spring training, MLB.tv was launched at $79.95 for a full season package, which garnered 100,000 subscribers. Those revenues halted the need for additional capital from the teams, taking only $77 million of the original planned $120 million.

In 2005, MLBAM bought ticket sales company Tickets.com in a deal worth approximately $66 million. MLBAM indicated at the time that the move was spurred by increased attendance at both the major and minor league levels of the sport and the need to make ticket purchases convenient for fans. In 2007, MLBAM signed a five-year deal with StubHub.

In April 2008, MLBAM signed with Yahoo for ad sales for three years. The company replaced Yahoo with Auditude in a multi-year deal in April 2011.

On February 20, 2014, Sports Illustrated announced the formation of 120 Sports, a streaming sports video service, with financial backing from MLBAM, the NHL, and Silver Chalice.

2K announced that it would not exercise its license to publish a 2015 MLB video game for the Xbox. Thus MLBAM developed a game from scratch in one and half years with only a dozen programmers. The game however was poorly received by the critics.

On August 4, 2015, the National Hockey League announced a six-year deal with MLBAM for it to take over its digital properties, including its websites, mobile apps, operations and distribution of its digital streaming service NHL GameCenter Live (renamed NHL.tv outside of Canada), and migrating NHL Network to the facilities of MLB Network. The deal is worth $600 million over the life of the contract, and also grants the NHL an equity stake of up to 10% in a spin-out of MLBAM's technology business.

BAM Tech

In February 2015, it was reported that MLBAM was planning to spin off its streaming technology division as an independent company, with investments by MLB and other minority partners. MLB-specific properties (such as MLB.com) would remain under league control. The formation of the spin-out, known as BAM Tech, was approved by the company's board of directors on August 13, 2015. In August 2016, The Walt Disney Company acquired a minority stake in the company for US$1 billion, with an option to acquire a majority stake in the future. Disney's investment is connected to a planned ESPN over-the-top service.

On November 1, 2016, MLB Advanced Media announced a partnership with Discovery Communications to form a European joint venture known as BAMTech Europe. Its first client will be Eurosport, the pan-European rightsholder of the Olympic Games.

In December 2016, Riot Games announced a deal with BAM Tech for the company to distribute and monetize broadcasts of professional competitions in its multiplayer video game League of Legends through 2023. BAM Tech will pay Riot at least $50 million per-year, and split advertising revenue.

MLB At Bat

The most successful venture to date for MLBAM is the At Bat app for the iPhone and iPad, which is downloadable from the iTunes store and also available as an Android app on Google Play. In April 2012, MLBAM announced that the MLB.com At Bat 12 application surpassed the three million download mark, achieving the milestone only eight days into the 2012 MLB regular season and more than four months earlier than its record-setting 2011 campaign.

MLBAM CEO Robert Bowman had this to say about MLBAM in an article entitled "What did you learn in 2012 that you will carry forth with you into 2013?":

"The toughest thing to do in a poker hand and in this business is stand pat. This year we decided to make our At Bat app universal between the iPad and iPhone, which we knew going in would cost us 100,000 subscribers. We threw in At Bat for free with an MLB.tv subscription, which would also cost us revenue. And we added up a monthly At Bat subscription to get people to test the product out. We gave customers more options and a better deal, and we had a record year in paid content. We learned we're at an inflection point. Customers now understand and appreciate the nuance of content economics. You'll see more of that value pricing from us going forward."

MLBAM vs. CDM

MLBAM signed a five-year, $50 million interactive rights deal with the MLB Players Association in 2005 to acquire most of the players' online rights, including fantasy sports. The deal exacerbated tension between fantasy sports companies and professional leagues and players associations over the rights to player profiles and statistics. The players associations of the major sports leagues believed that fantasy games using player names were subject to licensing due to the right of publicity of the players involved. During the 1980s and 1990s many companies signed licensing deals with the player associations, but many companies did not. The issue came to a head when MLBAM denied a fantasy baseball licensing agreement to St. Louis-based CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc., the parent company of CDM Sports. CBC filed suit as a result. CBC argued that intellectual property laws and so-called "right of publicity" laws don't apply to the statistics used in fantasy sports. The FSTA filed a friend of the court brief in support of CBC which argued that MLBAM's step to deny CBC a license was the first step to limit the number of companies in the market, that could result in MLBAM having a monopoly. CBC won the lawsuit as U.S. District Court Judge Mary Ann Medler ruled that statistics are part of the public domain and can be used at no cost by fantasy companies. "The names and playing records of major-league baseball players as used in CBC's fantasy games are not copyrightable," Medler wrote. "Therefore, federal copyright law does not pre-empt the players' claimed right of publicity." The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision in October 2007. "It would be a strange law that a person would not have a First Amendment right to use information that is available to everyone," a three-judge panel said in its ruling.

On June 2, 2008, the United States Supreme Court denied MLB's petition for a writ of certiorari.

MLBAM has lost nearly $2 million on the case and may now opt out of the agreement with the MLBPA and also faces the potential loss of millions of dollars of licensing fees from major media companies, such as Fox. ESPN opted out of a seven-year, $140 million deal with MLBAM after three years in January 2008. The decision to opt out came less than three months after the CDM case was upheld on appeal as "ESPN thinks the court's decision means that it was paying a license fee for fantasy rights that others, such as CDM, were getting free."

MLBAM patents and patent infringement issues

MLBAM has been issued some patents with others still "patent pending" before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. For example, MLBAM was awarded a patent for technology that blocked certain fans from viewing local games online. MLBAM was also awarded a patent for geolocation. MLBAM was particularly proud of U.S. Patent No. 7,486,943 for geolocating baseball fans for live MLB.TV games. In addition, MLBAM was issued a patent for a system and method for allocating seats for a ticketed event. Another example of an MLBAM patent is U.S. Patent No. 8,045,965 entitled "System and method for venue-to-venue messaging," which lists MLBAM CEO Robert A. Bowman as a co-inventor (inventorship).

MLBAM has been the subject of patent infringement lawsuits. See, for example, DDB Techs., L.L.C. v. MLB Advanced Media, L.P. This case began as a patent infringement suit between DDB Technologies (DDB) and MLBAM over several patents for generating a computer simulation of a live event for display on a viewer's computer as well as one patent for a method allowing a viewer to search for certain information about a live event. The technology at issue was being used for simulation of baseball and other sporting activities. The case was finally settled with MLBAM acquiring rights to the DDB patent portfolio.

MLBAM has also been sued for patent infringement of the Front Row Technologies patent portfolio covering the delivery of sports and entertainment video to hand held devices such as smartphones (e.g., iPhone, Android), pad computing devices (e.g., iPad, Kindle, etc.), laptop computers and the like. According to the patent infringement complaint filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, MLBAM infringed U.S. Patent Number 8,090,321 entitled "Transmitting sports and entertainment data to wireless hand held devices over a telecommunications network."

120Sports

120Sports, LLC is an online streaming-video sports channel company owned by Time Inc. / Sports Illustrated, MLBAM, the NHL, the PGA TOUR, Campus Insiders and Silver Chalice. The channel produces 2 minute or 120 second segments thus the origin of the streaming services' name. The president of 120 Sports is Jason Coyle and is based at Harpo Studios, owned by Sterling Bay, in Chicago.

The channel is supported by six one-minute commercial breaks on the fours within live programming. Other sponsorship programs consist of wraparound promos and brand integration. Silver Chalice and Sports Illustrated, owned by Time Inc., are both selling national advertising.

120Sports history

Time Inc. announced on February 20, 2014 the formation of 120Sports online streaming-video sports channel with MLB Advance Media, the National Hockey League and Silver Chalice as additional equity investors. Additional content partners were announced as the National Basketball Association (NBA) and NASCAR. Initial investors were making in-kind contributions towards the venture to keep cash flow needed down. On Wednesday June 25, 2014, 120Sports began streaming live. Verizon, Geico, Nissan and Transamerica were initial primary advertising sponsors with ad time most sold. 120 Morning Run, its live weekday morning show, was launched on July 2, 2014 hosted by Chicago sports talk veterans Laurence Holmes and Dylan McGorty.

BAMTech

BAMTech is a streaming technology provider joint venture between Baseball Advanced Media, The Walt Disney Company and the National Hockey League. The company handles streaming for HBO, MLB, NHL and WWE.

In February 2015, it was reported that MLBAM was planning to spin off its streaming technology division as an independent company, with investments by MLB and other minority partners. MLB-specific properties (such as MLB.com) would remain under league control. The formation of the spin-out, which will be known as BAM Tech, was approved by the company's board of directors on August 13, 2015.

In August 2016, Disney purchased a 1/3 stake in BAMTech for $1 billion with the option to purchase a majority share. Disney purchased the stake to first develop an ESPN subscription streaming service. The service would not include any current ESPN channel or its content, but tap into rights held by BAMTech, MLB and NHL, additional ESPN held college rights,

In December 2016, BAMTech and Riot Games partnered, both having high aspirations. They aim to “push the boundaries of the esports viewing experience” in League of Legends.