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MLBAM's Chad Evans shows how MLB.TV on Apple TV will offer split-screen viewing and in-game notifications.
Photo by: MLBAM |
MLB Advanced Media this week will begin selling subscriptions for its flagship streaming product, the MLB.TV out-of-market live game package, with the largest set of changes in the service’s 14-year history.
Fueled in large part by settlement terms in the recent Garber vs. MLB legal matter (SportsBusiness Journal, Jan. 25-31), MLB.TV this year will carry a price of $109.99, down from $129.99 last year. A new single-team option will be offered for $84.99, and a new $10 Follow Your Team add-on option allows for a limited, conditional breakthrough of baseball’s blackout rules that have often frustrated fans and helped prompt the Garber lawsuit.
MLB.TV, the sports industry’s longest-running streaming product, will carry several other major technological changes planned long before the Garber settlement last month, as well. The streaming video on connected TV platforms will be presented with a video quality of 60 frames per second, a high-definition resolution twice the prior rate. The 60 frames per second resolution also is available in the rebuilt NHL.TV, now supported by MLBAM as part of the large-scale digital rights deal struck between MLBAM and the NHL last year.
In addition, MLB.TV on the relaunched Apple TV streaming video platform will offer live statistics and pitch tracking synced to the video; in-game notifications; and a split-screen option that allows fans to watch two games at once. MLBAM debuted those features in September at an Apple special event unveiling the new Apple TV.
Similarly, this will be the first full season MLBAM will be able to take advantage of iPad multitasking made possible through last September’s release of Apple’s iOS 9 mobile operating system. That multitasking allows a user to watch a live game on the iPad while performing other functions.
“There is a lot there for the fans,” said Bob Bowman, MLB president of business and media. “This has been an important, successful product for us, and we would expect it to remain so.”
The out-of-market package is buttressed by progress MLBAM is making on in-market streaming. After years of roadblocks, baseball’s digital arm last fall struck a three-year deal with Fox Sports to offer authenticated in-market live streaming to the 15 teams it holds rights to through its regional sports networks. MLBAM this season will offer “fast-app switching” to move users directly from MLB.TV to Fox Sports Go to view the in-market games.
The Garber settlement also creates a pathway for regional sports networks owned by Comcast and DirecTV to offer in-market streaming by 2017. And Bowman said “extensive negotiations” in this area continue with several entities, including the Fenway Sports Group-owned New England Sports Network.
The MLB.TV subscription will again include free access to MLBAM’s primary mobile application, MLB.com, a pairing now in its fifth season.
MiLB.TV, carrying live feeds of nearly every Class AAA game and many Class AA and A games, returns for a sixth season this year. Full-season 2016 pricing for the minor league package has not yet been finalized, but it has cost $49.99 the last two years with a 50 percent discount for MLB.TV subscribers.
