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MLBAM - Digital Divide on the Clock?

By Mark

When the history of Bud Selig's run as Baseball Commissioner is written, there will be few true success stories. Steroids will be writ large and should properly loom over the entirety of his term in such magnitude as to perhaps block out all else that he has accomplished. One of the few, if not the only, unalloyed successes of his term is the creation of Major League Baseball Advanced Media. More importantly though was Selig's convincing the owners to each put up $1,000,000 and own the resulting company equally and share all profits from digital media, to which all rights were assigned, equally. MLBAM produced revenue of $360 million last year, producing baseball on the Internet and handling the sale of one-third of all the tickets sold at the ballpark. This is the singular genius stroke of his commissionership and now it too is about to go down the tubes.

The usual big market teams have raised the usual big market objections to the current arrangement. Led by the Dodgers, Angels, Red Sox and Orioles (surprise, the Yankees haven't been heard from aren't' you) there is a move afoot to split off the local markets for themselves. In the unctuous words of TV producer and Red Sox owner Tom Werner, "We want MLBAM to continue to grow, but the local markets are ours." Werner is probably one of the producers negotiating the writers strike. This should be non-negotiable. It is one of the few true revenue sharing and true market leveling operations in baseball, which doesn't share TV revenue equally as football does, and baseball should not give in to the big market operators who surely don't need one more revenue stream by which to separate themselves from the rest of the pack. Just say no for once in your life Bud.

Full post as published by Sports Biz on November 19, 2007 (boomark / email).