Business Week has a nice article on how MLB is taking advantage of the internet nowadays. With the Olympics and the conventions going on, the content world has almost been ignoring little things like MLBAM (Major League Baseball Advanced Media). But as we leave those behind, the World Series looms as possibly the next big CDN event. I particularly liked this quote:
“Rights fees are up, attendance is up, viewership is up,” says Bob Bowman, chief executive at MLBAM. “Somehow the strategy of putting [baseball games] on every device that has a plug or a battery has worked for the business partners. Even more important, it’s worked for our fans.”
Now that’s a strategy CDN providers can really get behind! Now, I believe that Akamai has been the CDN provider for MLBAM since 2004. But I am fairly sure also that MLB uses Vyvx to aggregate that video from the stadiums, which means they have a relationship with Level 3 as well. It will be interesting to see if Level 3 can make inroads at MLBAM now that they are in the CDN business as well, they have stated many times that they intend to leverage their existing content customer relationships. It would make sense for MLBAM to diversify their CDN sourcing just as the BBC seems to be doing.
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Rob –
MLB uses a company called Swarmcast to distribute the games. It’s a very cool technology that does in fact let them multi-source the delivery of the video, basing the “chunks” of traffic on performance, dynamic characteristics, commits to providers, etc. So if MLB has a large commit with Akamai, for instance, then they can distribute the content to meet that commit and then source the rest of the traffic through Panther (who does a bit of traffic), their origin, or whoever they want.