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On Deck for MLB: The Chatting Cage

May 29, 2013 by

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I spend a lot of time on Major League Baseball’s various sites and use one of its apps when traveling to listen to ball games but I was surprised to find that it has a whole level of social interaction with fans that I was unaware of until this weekend.

When looking around its video section for a highlight from a game last year I came upon an online chat with Mat Latos of the Cincinnati Reds that had been recorded earlier this month. It is part of MLB’s continued effort to use social media as another way to engage fans and is called The Edward Jones Chatting Cage, online video chats that has fans talking with players, coaches, managers and team executives.

The program was started last year but if you missed it that is understandable, (I did) it debuted without a great deal of fanfare in late September. But it is going strong now and you can view old conversations as well as participate in future ones although it is not entirely intuitive.

Going to the MLB page and you can find a section for videos. In videos you can find the Edward Jones Chatting Cage link. Click on that it takes you to the archives. There you can find past episodes where a variety of players and management answer fans questions. However there are no instructions on how to participate that I could find.

However if you follow MLB’s Facebook page it does alert users to when the next Chatting Cage will be held, although you might need to search for it since they do not occur very often. You have to scroll down quite a bit to before the Latos interview to find out about the last one. No special section highlighting the event or mentioning when the next one will occure. You can submit questions via Facebook for the chats. Looking elsewhere I found that you can use Twitter with @MLB using the hashtag #chattingcage.

When you watch one of the archived shows it is obvious that fans can also log in using a web cam and ask live questions to the players and how they do that is not obvious, or if it is I am completely missing it.

However I like the concept a great deal. Of course it leaves itself open to trolls, as can be seen in some of the Facebook comments, but is a great way for fans to ask real questions of players and management, something they cannot do with any real chance outside of this program. If other sports pick up on this idea, and it’s hard to see why they would not, it could spell the death of all of the independent apps.

Filed Under: Apps, Athlete to Follow, Baseball, Facebook, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, Sports Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , , , ,

MLB Comes to TiVo-Is there a Player it Does Not support?

May 22, 2013 by

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One of the advantages of having MLB.TV Premium subscription has always been that you can use a variety of platforms to watch and listen to games, but until MLB added TiVo I never realized how many it actually did support.

TiVo users can now watch MLB games, subject to certain limitations, and the app is designed to take advantage of select features that come with TiVo. MLB integrated TiVo’s standard playback functions into the app, including the ability to pause, fast-forward and rewind or skip game action.

The MLB.TV is set up to deliver game viewing and video stream in a picture-in-graphic (PIG) or an “L bar” window to view the score while watching a game. There are a range of additional features from the relatively mundane ones such as stats and standings, favorite team selection, a choice of home or away broadcasters, and calendar view to one called “Jump to Inning” that permits users to jump back to the beginning of any inning in the game.

The addition of TiVo support is in line with MLB’s approach of delivering its programming and games to its audience in as wide a manner as possible. It has a number of mobile devices supported including Apple’s iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Then there is the huge number of devices that support Google’s Android operating system and most recently added was support for the BlackBerry Z10.

Now I was aware of all of these but the other, more stationary platforms caught me by a bit of a surprise, although I have watched games on two of the platforms. There is the Sony Playstation 3, Samsung TV and Blu-ray Disc Player, Apple TV, Roku Player and Boxee. Then of course there is also Xbox 360, Sony TV and Blu-ray players and Western Digital TV Live.

It is too bad that other sports do not actively follow the lead of MLB, but I guess that the broadcasting contracts most likely prohibit them from doing so. Fans of many teams, say in football, are constantly subjected to a limited number of teams on national broadcasts, and if you live outside of your teams home base you may only see them once or twice on broadcast TV a season.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, BlackBerry, Google, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, Tablets Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

A Foodfight comes to Minor League Baseball

May 20, 2013 by

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For fans of minor league baseball there is now a contest for them to sink their teeth into, a competition that will seek to judge which MiLB ballpark has the best concessions in a social media driven contest sponsor by Major League Baseball’s Advanced Media arm.

The MiLB.com #foodfight contest will include 160 minor league ball yards and will have four different, and pretty clear, categories. They are: Gut Busters, Hogs ‘n’ Dogs, Local Legends and Scrumptious Sandwiches and voting can be done via Twitter or at the MiLB.com web site.

For Twitter users use the #foodfight and include the nickname of the team that is selling the food that you are voting on. You can also visit MiLB.com/foodfight to vote for their favorite food item in each of the four categories.

You can vote early and vote often since there is no limit to the amount of times that you vote. But do so soon since the first round of voting ends next week on the 29th. The next day the final round of voting will start and run for one week with the winner announced on June 6th.

There is the potential for participants as well with a sweepstakes that includes all of the voters. The winner gets a trip to the ballpark with the winning food item and includes roundtrip airfare, accommodations, game tickets and other prizes.

If you like ball park food, visit the MiLB site to see some of the offerings that are eligible for votes. It sure has gone a long way since hot dogs and cracker jacks were the standards.

Filed Under: Apps, Baseball, Contests, Major League Baseball, MinorLeagueBall.com, Twitter Tagged With: , ,

Would Proposed A La Carte Cable Bill Hurt Sports Channels?

May 13, 2013 by

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Senator John McCain is introducing a bill that would enable cable companies to offer subscribers the ability to select which channels they would watch, and pay for and allow them to relegate the remainder to the waste bin.

The push is not his first try at this, he had a similar bill back in 2006 that did go very far, and the new effort, called the Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013 is designed to encourage the cable companies to offer freedom of choice for their customers.
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ESPN and its related channels and packages are one of the more expensive set of channels available, and currently if you get basic cable a nice chunk of your bill gets sent to them. This in turn has allowed it to have a war chest that has seen it increase its power in the sports world by buying broadcast rights. If this passed and a large number of people opted out of its sports channels it would be weakened.

Also the growing number of league channels would also be potentially harmed as well. The rise of the SEC, PAC-12 and other dedicated networks has been helped by their channels getting bundled with other properties, something that the bill would outlaw. Would you pay extra year round to have a network that may broadcast only one sport that you are interested in?

However one interesting thing about the bill is that the unfettering would be voluntary, but does include some incentives to get the major players on board. There are a few sections that do appear to have some teeth in them. One of which is if networks pull their on the air broadcasts and put them on cable they would be stripped of their spectrum and the spectrum would then be sold by the FCC.

There are some other interesting tidbits in the bill including a provision that would prohibit television blackouts at publicly funded stadiums or even stadiums that have used some public funds. I am pretty sure that includes all of the NFL stadiums.

This type of a la carte push has been strongly resisted by both broadcasters and content providers and they will likely launch a strong effort to kill the bill or to at least remove its few teeth.

Filed Under: Baseball, Basketball, BCS, Big Ten Network, ESPN, ESPN FC, ESPN3, Fox Sports, Golf Channel, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, NBC Sports, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NFL Tagged With: , ,

MLBAM Teams with NDN to Deliver MLB Video to News Web Sites

May 8, 2013 by

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A trip to your favorite baseball news site may soon be enlivened by video that matches up with the stories due to a new deal that has been struck between Major League Baseball’s Advanced Media (MLBAM) arm and Internet video provider NDN.

While it may seem odd that MLB needs a partner on video, it has been producing highlights and videos that are available on the Internet for over a decade, the deal will enable the sports league to hook up with a huge number of online news services.

NDN will enhance MLB’s existing video business by passing it along to its syndicated news partners, with approximately 4,500 online news publishers that have relationships with the company. In addition it often works with its partners to embed content in its partners stories.

The net result will be a boon for baseball fans who now can read a local story about their favorite team and then watch the clinching strike out or the walk off home run rather than forcing them to eave that site to go to MLB’s site to view the action.

This policy shines very nicely when compared to the very restrictive rules of the NFL, which has very strong restrictions of what can be shown, and for how long. It even demanded that top reporters shut down their twitter accounts during the NFL draft.

It seems to us that sports networks need to understand that increasingly fans are looking for information, and videos, on their teams from a growing diversity of media including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Internet news sites and rather than fight them they are better off joining with them to make the experience better for the fans.

Filed Under: Apps, Baseball, Facebook, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, NFL, YouTube Tagged With: , , ,

MLBAM Expands Relationship with YouTube for more Broadcast Video Options

May 1, 2013 by

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Major League Baseball via its Advanced Media (MLBAM) arm has joined with YouTube to provide an array of viewing options to fans that will be shown on the official MLB YouTube channel as they expand the 8 year old partnership.

For the most part the deal is simply an expansion of their current relationship but for baseball fans there are some additional perks for using the channel, and even better perks for fans that travel outside of MLB’s main broadcast markets.

The updated MLB.com YouTube channel will include in-season highlights of every game played during the current season, with the highlights available approximately two days after the games conclusion. The site will now also feature videos from MLB.com’s Baseball’s Best Moments library.

For travelers on the road and inhabitants of select areas the offerings are even better, depending on where you are. It will be streaming for no charge two live games daily, but available for viewers only in areas that are outside of what MLB calls its core live video distribution areas that includes North America, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.

MLBAM has been delivering live streaming for a decade and has been delivering full game archives and highlight reels online via YouTube-however only in Australia, Brazil, Japan, New Zealand and Russia since 2010 so the current deal will open up that coverage to much of the rest of the globe. I wonder what took it so long?

Filed Under: Apps, Baseball, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, YouTube Tagged With: , ,
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