MLBAM

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MLB Advanced Media, L.P.
Type Private company
Founded June 2000
Headquarters NY, New York
Key people Robert A. Bowman, CEO
Industry Internet Information Providers
Products MLB.com, MLB.TV, Gameday Audio
Revenue $300 million USD (2006)
Website MLB.com

Major League Baseball Advanced Media, L.P., is a subsidiary of Major League Baseball, and is the internet and interactive branch of the league. The company operates the official web site for the league and 30 Major League Baseball club web sites via MLB.com, which draws four million hits per day. The site offers news, standings, statistics, and schedules, and subscribers have access to live audio and video broadcasts of most games. The site also employs reporters, with one assigned to each team for the season and others serving more general beats. MLB Advanced Media also owns and operates MLB Radio and BaseballChannel.TV.

MLBAM also runs and/or owns the official web sites of MiLB.com (Minor League Baseball), Major League Soccer's MLSNet [1], Yes Network's YesNetwork.com (The television broadcaster of the New York Yankees), SportsNet New York's SNY.tv (The television broadcaster of the New York Mets), the World Championship Sports Network,[2], Guns N' Roses, Bob Marley, and rehearsals.com [3]. It also provided the backend infrastructure for CBS Sportsline's March Madness on Demand service [4].

Contents

[edit] Ticket resale

In 2007, MLBAM signed a 5-year deal with Stub Hub centralizing resale of tickets. This may cause tension between owners since some might find more profitable deals [5].

[edit] Fantasy Sports

[edit] MLBAM vs. CDM Legal Case

MLBAM signed a five-year, $50 million interactive rights deal with the MLB Players Association in 2005 to acquire most of the players' online rights, including fantasy sports. The deal exacerbated tension between fantasy sports companies and professional leagues and players associations over the rights to player profiles and statistics. The players associations of the major sports leagues believed that fantasy games using player names were subject to licensing due to the right of publicity of the players involved. During the 1980s and 1990s many companies signed licensing deals with the player associations, but many companies did not. The issue came to a head when MLBAM denied a fantasy baseball licensing agreement to St. Louis-based CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc., the parent company of CDM Sports. CBC filed suit as a result.

CBC argued that intellectual property laws and so-called "right of publicity" laws don't apply to the statistics used in fantasy sports.[6] The FSTA filed a friend of the court brief in support of CBC which argued that MLBAM's step to deny CBC a license was the first step to limit the number of companies in the market, that could result in MLBAM having a monopoly.

CBC won the lawsuit as U.S. District Court Judge Mary Ann Medler ruled that statistics are part of the public domain and can be used at no cost by fantasy companies. "The names and playing records of major-league baseball players as used in CBC's fantasy games are not copyrightable," Medler wrote. "Therefore, federal copyright law does not pre-empt the players' claimed right of publicity."[7]

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision in October 2007.[8] "It would be strange law that a person would not have a First Amendment right to use information that is available to everyone," a three-judge panel said in its ruling.[9]

On June 2, 2008, the United States Supreme Court denied MLB's petition for a writ of certiorari.[10]

MLBAM has lost nearly $2 million on the case and may now opt out of the agreement with the MLBPA and also faces the potential loss of millions of dollars of licensing fees from major media companies, such as Fox.[11] ESPN opted out of a seven-year, $140 million deal with MLBAM after three years in Jan. 2008. The decision to opt out came less than three months after the CDM case was upheld on appeal as "ESPN thinks the court's decision means that it was paying a license fee for fantasy rights that others, such as CDM, were getting free." [12]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Major League Soccer: News: Article
  2. ^ WCSN.com: Help
  3. ^ rehearsals.com: Article: Features
  4. ^ Our Apologies
  5. ^ NY Times
  6. ^ "Fantasy leagues permitted to use MLB names, stats", ESPN, 2006-08-08. Retrieved on 2007-07-28. 
  7. ^ "Fantasy leagues permitted to use MLB names, stats", ESPN, 2006-08-08. Retrieved on 2007-07-28. 
  8. ^ http://www.svmedialaw.com/Fantasy%20Baseball%20opinion.pdf
  9. ^ "Fantasy Sports Win Right to Player Names, Statistics", Bloomerberg, October 16, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-07-28. 
  10. ^ http://www.supremecourtus.gov/orders/courtorders/060208pzor.pdf
  11. ^ Fisher, Eric. "Fantasy challenge costly for MLBAM, union", Sports Business Journal, Street & Smith's Sports Group, October 22, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-11-01. 
  12. ^ "ESPN seeks better MLBAM terms", Sports Business Journal, Street & Smith's Sports Group, January 21, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-01-25.