MLBAM "is talking to bankers about taking itself public, but the multibillion-dollar enterprise would be making the move without its flagship MLB.com or any other baseball assets, including ticketing," according to Josh Kosman of the N.Y. POST. It is an "odd position" for MLBAM, whose technology "is used to stream a slew of non-baseball content, from HBO and Sony programming" to WWE events and NHL games. Sources said that MLB President of Business & Media Bob Bowman "has hired Goldman Sachs and Evercore to explore options for the non-baseball entity, including an IPO or the sale of a minority stake to an outside investor." MLB owners "would love to cash in on what has turned out to be a very lucrative investment." Each team "chipped in" $4M to fund MLBAM in the late ’90s. A source said that MLBAM "values the non-baseball division, which would be called BamTech," at around $3B. Still, "flipping the switch on what could be a very profitable initial public offering for the team owners won’t be that easy" because MLBAM "has been going to bat against various regional sports networks over an extremely valuable piece of business -- the rights to stream baseball games in local markets." Big-market owners "have been siding with the regional sports networks, believing they should be able to sell the rights to the RSNs." Sources said that by doing the non-baseball IPO now, it "would allow MLBAM to raise money so it can bid for more streaming contracts" (N.Y. POST, 6/25).
