MLB.comMini Case Study – Major League

Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM)Version 3.0 – Updated February 2011

Prepared byMartin Walsh

Head of Digital Marketing / Producer

Background• www.mlb.com launched in 2000

• MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) was backed by all 30 MLB teams

• Each team would contribute USD$1m per year for 4 years to get the MLBAM startup off the ground

• Began to make money within 2.5 years which allowed the teams to only invest USD $70-75m in startup costs vs the projected $120m

• MLB.TV subscription service has now served one billion live video streams since its inception, 25% (250 million) of which were delivered in 2010 alone.

Situational Context• In 2009, MLB generated USD$6.8b in revenue (NFL USD$7.8b, NBA USD$4b,

NHL USD$3b)

• Super Bowl drew in 111m viewers in 2011 while only 14.1m tuned into the 2010 World Series.

• But, baseball has found increasingly inventive ways to ramp up revenue from:

• Counter intuitively reducing the number of seats in stadiums

• to selling streaming video of baseball games online - hitting record revenues for 5 consecutive years.

MLB.com offers fans the most complete baseball information on the web, including :

• up-to-date statistics

• game summaries

• extensive historical information

• exclusive features about Major League Baseball events and programs

• forums and message boards

• blogs

• on-line ticket sales

• baseball merchandise

• authenticated memorabilia and collectibles

• fantasy games

• live and archived radio broadcasts of every game

• live and archived video webcasts of entire games

• pitch-by-pitch enactment of games

• hosted post-game video highlight shows

Key Statistics

• MLB.com generated more than USD$500m in 2009 up from USD$380m in 2007 and up from $236m in 2005. It is growing more than 30% per annum

• MLB.com gets 6-19.4m* unique visitors per month

• MLB.com sells more than 1.5m annual season subscriptions

• 1.1 million for live audio and video and roughly 420,000 apps.

• Streams as many as 6m videos per day

• On the video front, in 2010 viewers racked up 9.5 billion minutes of streamed ballgames across all devices, including wired.

• MLBAM now manages online & mobile video content for numerous online affiliates such as NCAA, French tennis Open and ESPN3

• MLB.com has boosted ticket sales using digital channels

• tickets used to slide 72 hours before game

• 27m+ tickets sold online in 2007 (total MLB tickets sold 79.5m)

• MLB.com accounted for 34% of all ticket sales in 2007 and 2008

• At least 8 teams now deliver last-minute digital ticket sales to mobiles

*There is a dispute between the lower Nielsen numbers and MLB.com’s higher server logs data.

The next slide features a video with Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) CEO Bob Bowman. Here's Business Insider’s full conversation, including one of the best synopses about what the

future of television will REALLY be like……

MLB and Mobiles

• The MLB.com At Bat application can be downloaded in the App Store for $9.99 and users can then stream complete MLB games to their iPhone for $0.99 each (see story).

• MLB’s iPhone portfolio also includes the GameDay, LiveAudio and LiveVideo applications.

• The brand's applications have been downloaded more than a million times and 400,000 of the downloads are for paid applications.

• MLB.com’s WAP site today gets 25 million page views daily, which includes 4 million unique visitors.

• In 2008, mobile comprised 8 percent of MLBAM’s traffic; in 2010, it represented 37 percent of all of MLBAM’s vistors.

So what has MLB.com learned? What are the secrets to a successful mobile application?

• “Great content matters—it matters how you present your content, what it looks like and how easy it is to use,” Mr. Bowman said. “How you get your app discovered is very important and it’s hard even if you’re Major League Baseball.

• “We’re trying to get people to use our apps, not ESPN’s apps, and it’s not enough just to say ‘We’re baseball,’” he said. “The notion of a one-minute delay is unacceptable, it has to be now, because people want to be the first to know, they want to see it on their phone before they hear about it on TV.

• “Another important piece is providing ease of payment, and iTunes plays a key role, but it’s important for billing systems to be user-friendly because it’s a pain in the butt for a lot of people to type on their phones.”

“Whereas with subscription products on other channels people might use it once or twice a week, our mobile app consumers use it every day, which is staggering,” Mr. Bowman said. “We’ve seen phenomenal usage levels and it’s because you have the phone with you all the time.

“It stays next to you at your bedside table and it’s the first thing you look at in the morning when you wake up,” he said.

Robert Bowman is president/CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media

The next slide will show a Video review of MLB iPhone, iPad and Android Apps…

MLB.com Postseason ‘Pulse’

• Launched for 2009 MLB Season• With the MLB playoffs in full swing, it’s been hard to

miss the chatter on Twitter during pivotal moments during games. MLB.com is now tracking all of that action, and compiling it in an interactive inning-by-inning timeline of each game that compiles Twitter buzz alongside video highlights.

• The result is MLB’s “Pulse” feature which now accompanies the Wrap Up of each game. In addition to the graph for each team’s tweet volume and highlights, you can also see all of the tweets that MLB pulled in, so you can see specifically what people were saying at any point during the game.

• Over the past few months, MLB.com has worked to develop an intriguing balance of voices who will help emcee the postseason conversation. From award-winning writers like "The Daily Show"'s Paul Mecurio and Marvel icon Matt Fraction to comedian Larry Miller and Olympic superstar Jennie Finch, the cast of daily contributors will be as diverse as it is entertaining.

• This growing crew will provide the Pulse with instant in-game reactions via live tweets from the stadiums, in addition to interviews from our MLB.com studios for all their postseason analysis and predictions.

• You'll also have the chance to participate in the conversation yourself.

• The Pulse page will feature all of your tweets mixed in with the baseball-talking we find across various cultures, and there is an "Everyone" tab - identical to the one on Gameday and MLB.TV -- so that your tweets will show up on MLB.com. Include #mlbpulse in your tweet and that will make it appear, or better yet, just do your tweeting from within the "Everyone" spot on the Pulse page.

About MartinMartin is the Producer of the critically acclaimed and award winning The Battle of Long Tan Documentary and from 2005 to late 2009 he led Digital Marketing @ Microsoft defining, developing and executing Microsoft’s B2C and B2B global digital marketing and social influenceMarketing strategies & disciplines.

Prior to Microsoft, Martin successfully led and grew the ecommerce division of a large Australian media &entertainment company from less than AUD$22 million in annual sales to more $AUD700 million in annual sales.

Martin has worked in senior marketing roles across radio, film, music, games, entertainment and the technology industries for companies such as News Corporation, Village Roadshow / PBL, Austereo, Telstra, BMG (Bertelsmann), Sydney 2000 Olympics and Tabcorp. He specialises in digital & consumer marketing, social media marketing, social CRM, search engine marketing and online analytics and he has also advised organisations such as Australian Rugby Union, Cricket Australia, film distributors, games publishers, media and government on how to engage with consumers, commercially exploit their content and enhance their digital marketing capability & strategies.

In late 2004 Martin established Red Dune Films and acquired the film, documentary & story rights to the Battle of Long Tan from the seven Australian Long Tan combat commanders. In 2006 he produced the ASTRA award winning & TV Week Logie award nominated Battle of Long Tan documentary for The History Channel (FOXTEL) which was narrated by Sam Worthington (Terminator Salvation, Avatar & Clash of The Titans).

The innovative marketing & publicity strategy Martin (and Graham Cassidy) developed for the Long Tan documentary & film has so far resulted in unprecedented media coverage comprising two 60 Minutes stories, magazine cover stories, a national media partnership with News Limited, a national 40th anniversary service in Canberra which was televised live on the Nine TV Network, a public thank you and apology by Australia’s then Prime Minister John Howard to Vietnam Veterans, tens of thousands of online video views and fans and an eventual upgrade to the soldiers gallantry medals. View TV coverage here. Martin is also producing a feature film on Long Tan with Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy, Double Jeopardy, Breaker Morant) directing as well as a variety of other feature films and alternate reality games (ARG’s).

Born In Melbourne but now living in Sydney, Martin originally began his career as an Actor before serving with Australian Army Special Forces - 2 Commando Company, 1st Commando Regiment and then studying innovation at Swinburne University earning a Master’s Degree and Graduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Thank you!

mwalsh@reddunefilms.com

http://twitter.com/martinwalsh

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/martin-walsh/5/503/a77