Google and MLB today are announcing a multiyear collaboration that makes Google Cloud the league's official cloud and cloud data & analytics partner. MLB's business operations, including Statcast -- the automated tool for analyzing player movements and abilities -- will now run on Google Cloud. Also, for the third straight season, MLB will use Google Ad Manager and its Dynamic Ad Insertion feature to power its ad business. The partnership is aimed at upgrading MLB's processes and offering fans more highly personalized experiences. MLB will migrate its cloud and on-premises systems to Google Cloud and leverage Google’s machine learning, analytics, application management and data/video storage capabilities to increase reliability and manage governance at scale. Google also will become the underlying data analytics technology of Statcast. Google will collaborate closely with MLB to introduce the next evolution of Statcast. MLB Exec VP/Strategy, Technology & Innovation Chris Marinak said, "It's really about our entire consumer platform, and it creates an opportunity for us to create more personalization and more direct engagement with our fans through things like machine learning and artificial intelligence. We feel like we can create a really unique experience for the fans that consume baseball --- to help design that, to be a product that is more engaging, more interesting and can have the level of depth and information that that particular fan wants to have."
TOUCH EM' ALL: Marinak said MLB is working on a new 3-D product for Statcast that fans will see on broadcasts periodically. MLB also will be working on new data-sharing elements with its teams. "The next generation of viewers is really looking at video experiences that can go far beyond the video play when I press play," Google Cloud Managing Dir Anil Jain said. "For us, this partnership is significant because it's also about reinventing MLB's marquee analytics system, Statcast." The most tangible thing fans will see initially is what MLB will be able to do with Statcast. Marinak said that machine learning and AI are the features that will unlock the next generation of compelling data experience for fans. "As we unlock additional tracking technology, it's about going from a world where we were saying, 'Yeah, the right fielder was over there plus or minus five feet,' to ' Here's where all the limbs of the right fielder were, here's how quickly his first step was from when the ball came off the bat and here's the path he took to the ball,'" he said. MLB believes its migration to Google Cloud already has resulted in an exponential improvement in analytics and decision making, enabling MLB to provide teams with a unified data plane to enable accelerated decision making. The Google Ad Manager platform also continues to help MLB grow its media business by delivering ads seamlessly across screens wherever viewers are watching, whether on mobile, desktop or connected TV devices.
