Major League Baseball has a gold mine in MLB Advanced Media. Since it began in 2000, MLBAM generates a lot of money for MLB from online streaming of baseball games, the development of the MLB At Bat app and handling the websites of MLB and all 30 teams, it has become a cash cow.
And over the years, MLBAM has branched out to handle the streaming video for several organizations and sporting events including NCAA March Madness, WatchESPN, WWE Network, YES Network, SNY. as well as the new 120 Sports. Now you can add HBO under MLBAM’s umbrella.
Just announced this week, HBO will outsource its previously announced Over the Top subscription service to MLBAM. The HBO OTT service is slated to begin in the spring of 2015.
HBO has its own online app with HBO Go and has utilized its own in-house team to stream shows to its mobile, phone and Apple TV/Roku apps. The service has been maligned with outages and various problems despite the network spending a lot of money on development. Fortune reports that HBO came to the realization that the team would not be able to handle the Over the Top service, so it decided to go with an outside party and one that has the expertise and infrastructure for the expected demand.
To get HBO is a big feather in the cap for MLBAM. It’s one thing to stream MLB, college basketball and WWE pay per views, but being the online home for Game of Thrones, True Detective, Veep as well as gaining access to the HBO library of series like The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sex in the City, etc. is huge.
That a cable giant would outsource its new OTT service to MLBAM proves how much the entity is trusted and has grown. Details of the new HBO OTT service have yet to be released, but one can be assured that MLBAM will be ready for the launch and the demand of viewers who want their Game of Thrones.
[Fortune]