A trip to your favorite baseball news site may soon be enlivened by video that matches up with the stories due to a new deal that has been struck between Major League Baseball’s Advanced Media (MLBAM) arm and Internet video provider NDN.
While it may seem odd that MLB needs a partner on video, it has been producing highlights and videos that are available on the Internet for over a decade, the deal will enable the sports league to hook up with a huge number of online news services.
NDN will enhance MLB’s existing video business by passing it along to its syndicated news partners, with approximately 4,500 online news publishers that have relationships with the company. In addition it often works with its partners to embed content in its partners stories.
The net result will be a boon for baseball fans who now can read a local story about their favorite team and then watch the clinching strike out or the walk off home run rather than forcing them to eave that site to go to MLB’s site to view the action.
This policy shines very nicely when compared to the very restrictive rules of the NFL, which has very strong restrictions of what can be shown, and for how long. It even demanded that top reporters shut down their twitter accounts during the NFL draft.
It seems to us that sports networks need to understand that increasingly fans are looking for information, and videos, on their teams from a growing diversity of media including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Internet news sites and rather than fight them they are better off joining with them to make the experience better for the fans.
Speak Your Mind