Major League Baseball is finally stepping up its Internet presence, announcing an alliance with CBS SportsLine that gives SportsLine its most significant chip yet in its battle with Disney for sports supremacy on the Web.
Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN Internet division hosts the Web sites of the NFL, NBA, NHL and NASCAR. SportsLine added MLB to a stable that includes sites for the PGA, NFL Europe and three prominent athletes: Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Shaquille O'Neal. Baseball was the last of the major sports leagues to hand its Internet product over to an Internet giant.
The deal, which runs through 2001, gives CBS SportsLine and MLB a 50-50 split of revenue, with SportsLine responsible for developing, maintaining and hosting the site, as well as selling advertising and merchandise, according to sources. The site will keep its "majorleaguebaseball.com" moniker.
The upside for CBS SportsLine is that it gains further access to a product that's sure to attract traffic, as well as a credibility boost from an association with the only major sports league whose Internet host rights still were on the market. MLB gets a vast Internet distribution network that includes America Online, Netscape and Excite.
Though SportsLine's Internet product includes extensive material covering the NFL, NBA and NHL, it lacks several key components that come with a host relationship — including audiocasts, extensive audio and video highlights and chats.
SportsLine also comes away from the deal without paying an up-front rights fee, as ESPN did with the NFL, though SportsLine is required to meet a guarantee on advertising and e-commerce revenue, a source said. That guarantee amounts to something similar to a rights fee, as far as baseball is concerned. But CBS SportsLine gets to pay it on the back end.
ESPN's three-year deal with the NFL was reported to cost the network $10 million, but some in the Internet sports arena have since said that the intricacies of the deal, such as shared responsibilities for cost, brought that fee down substantially.
Neither CBS SportsLine nor MLB would discuss financial details.
"It's a very good deal for us,'' said Leslie Sullivan, vice president of broadcasting and new media for MLB.
"We had many conversations with a number of other [Internet companies]. Nobody came close to the resource commitment that they were willing to make."
Though Sullivan would not discuss those other parties, several are obvious. Along with ESPN, MLB explored relationships with Total Sports, which manages the NCAA Final Four site, as well as MSNBC, among others.
MLB said it hopes its broadened Internet presence will help rejuvenate its popularity among a corner of its audience that has softened somewhat.
"The key aspects for me are that it gives you an outlet to reach a certain demographic that's difficult to reach — 18-34 men," Sullivan said.
