Yahoo! and Major League Baseball Advanced Media have announced a three-year deal that will make all out-of-market baseball games available for a fee on Yahoo's Web site. Under the agreement, Yahoo! users will be able to access MLBAM's MLB.TV service using a special co-branded media player, and in exchange, Yahoo will manage all of MLB.TV's advertising sales during the 2009 and 2010 seasons.
"This agreement exemplifies Yahoo! as the partner of choice to premier media organizations, as we're providing MLB.com an opportunity to extend its reach to the largest possible audience, while at the same time maximizing monetization of its video subscription product," said Todd Teresi, senior vice president of the Yahoo! Publisher Channel, in a press release. "Partnering with MLB.com allows Yahoo! to offer our users an unmatched baseball experience, and also presents our advertisers with a new opportunity to reach a large, engaged audience of baseball enthusiasts."
The MLB.TV service allows fans to get live online streams of all out-of-market baseball games. Until now, it has only been available through MLB.com. Yahoo is currently the most popular Web portal on the Internet, with more than 19.2 unique users.
MLB.TV costs $89.95 per year or $14.95 per month for game streamed at 400k per second. MLB.TV Premium, which streams games at 800k or 1.2 MB per second, costs $119.95 or $19.95 per month. MLB.TV Premium also includes the Mosaic software program, which allows users to watch up to six games simultaneously.
