During Recode’s Code Media conference on Thursday Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) CEO, Bob Bowman, openly discussed creating a global sports network that would live online. This is an intriguing idea as digital platforms are clearly the future and MLBAM, with its current $1.2 billion in annual revenue and superior video streaming capabilities, is positioned to own this future nicely.
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However, Bowman knows that this vision is still a ways off as certain technological obstacles still exist. For instance, if you were to translate just a fraction of a typical television viewing audience to concurrent online streamers then there are serious Internet infrastructure limitations at hand due to the large amounts of live video needing to be served.
“Eventually we’ll get there when we have the hardware to be able to distribute 10 million concurrent streams in high quality fractured all over these devices,” said Bowman. “But you can’t sustain it [right now].” According to Bowman, MLBAM has peaked at two million concurrent streams.
To stay in perspective, Internet technology still needs to catch up with the scale of television. We are a long time away from 110+ million viewers watching the Super Bowl online instead of on television. But when technology supports that time, MLBAM will likely be the company behind it.