MLB Advanced Media has opened a new office in San Francisco, designed in part to service its fast-growing West Coast interests.
The new office, on Third Street just a few blocks from AT&T Park in the SoMa neighborhood, is in the same building as Comcast SportsNet Bay Area and Pac-12 Networks. MLBAM did not reveal the cost of opening the new location.
The office will align with MLBAM’s headquarters in Manhattan’s Chelsea Market and serve as the primary spot from which MLBAM will work on Sony’s new cloud-based TV service, PlayStation Vue, which involves a cable-like package of programming from 75 TV channels but delivered digitally rather than through a traditional cable or satellite box.
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| MLBAM will work on Sony’s new PlayStation Vue TV service, seen above, from its new office in San Francisco. |
PlayStation Vue is in a beta test, with a full rollout planned for 2015.
MLBAM will service the delivery and infrastructure for the live and on-demand streams, similar to what it does for ESPN, WWE, 120 Sports and a large collection of other clients.
The new San Francisco MLBAM office will also provide a full backup of the Replay Operations Center that opened this past spring in New York and is the backbone for baseball’s expanded instant replay system.
Bob Bowman, MLBAM president and chief executive, believes the new office will serve as a powerful employee recruitment and retention aide.
“A lot of talented people [in technology] prefer to live in San Francisco, so that allows us to be able to draw from that pool,” Bowman said. “It’s the right thing to do for us. And having a location right there allows us to call on people in San Francisco and Silicon Valley much more easily.”
The San Francisco MLBAM office has about 30 employees, but that number will likely increase as the Sony and replay efforts grow next year.
There is not a designated lead executive for the new location, which will have staffers working in both tech and sales. Most employees there will report either to Joe Inzerillo, chief technology officer and senior vice president of content technology, or Noah Garden, executive vice president of revenue.
MLBAM also operates a large data center in Omaha, Neb., that powers much of its video content delivery.
