MLB targets mobile phones
Aug 21, 2008 1:25 PM
MLB Advance Media President/CEO Bob Bowman said that when watching a live baseball game on a cell phone, short updates are better than longer segments.
Look for more advanced mobile phone applications, including live video, from major league baseball’s MLB Advanced Media.
In an interview with Bob Bowman, MLB Advance Media president and CEO, the “Wall Street Journal” noted that the MLB.com recorded 11.9 million visitors in June and brought in $400 million in profits last year. The major league teams share the profits equally.
After bringing live baseball to personal computers, the next major platform for MLB is the mobile phone, Bowman told the “Journal.” The league just released an application for Apple’s popular iPhone and will add box scores and player stats to the iPhone by Labor Day.
Bowman said he is also working with Research in Motion to upgrade services for the Blackberry. Currently with 500,000 users, the Blackberry is now a data machine and ultimately could become a video machine, Bowman said.
“People don’t look at their phone for very long. It’s about 30 seconds, and that’s how people are used to enjoying non-voice content on their wireless devices,” Bowman told the “Journal.” “For a live baseball game, I’d rather get five updates from five games rather than watch two minutes of a baseball game. That may change as quality gets better, as the pipe gets better, as all of these things get better, as screens get more robust. But right now, that’s where it is.”
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