PopCulture: Social Media Network to Livestream Look-Ins for MLB Postseason Games. “Twitter recently announced that it will livestream look-ins for MLB postseason games, making it the only social media platform to officially stream live look-ins during the playoffs. Official Twitter accounts from MLB, Blecher Report, ESPN and MLB on Fox will stream live look-ins, and MLB Network will provide shoulder programming.”
NBC Washington: MLB Struggling to Get Attendance Back to Pre-Pandemic Levels. “Major League Baseball is struggling to fill the stands at pre-COVID levels as the sport heads into the last 2 1/2 months of its first season since 2019 without capacity restrictions. MLB reached the All-Star break with an average attendance of 26,409. That represents a drop of 5.4% from the All-Star break of 2019 — which was 10 days earlier than this year.”
Engadget: Major League Baseball will stream 15 games on YouTube this season. “Like an ambitious butcher trying to cleave a dollar of meat out of a ten cent steak, Major League Baseball announced on Thursday that it is carving out a bit more of its television broadcast rights, renewing its four season-old deal for the ‘MLB Game of the Week Live on YouTube’ with the Alphabet property. But unlike other recently struck deals, these streaming exclusives will be free to watch and without local blackout restrictions.”
New York Daily News: Unvaccinated Yankees and Mets can’t play at home under current NYC rules. “Unvaccinated players on the Yankees and Mets are covered by the same private sector employer mandate that is keeping Kyrie Irving off the court in Brooklyn, a City Hall spokesperson told the Daily News. Mayor Eric Adams repealed the Key2NYC vaccine mandate covering indoor spaces like gyms, dining and entertainment on Mar. 7. But Irving remained ineligible to play under a separate regulation: A private employer mandate put in place by the de Blasio administration on Dec. 27.”
Techdirt: MLB Removes References To Current Players On MLB.com Due To Lockout. “For non-MLB fans, the quick version is this: the collectively bargained labor agreement between owners and players expired this week without a new agreement inked. As a result, the players are now locked out of team facilities by ownership. That last bit is important, because many people have been describing this as a labor strike. It isn’t. At all. This is the owners refusing to let the players fulfill their duties. And as part of that, it seems, MLB released the following news update on its MLB.com website.”
Yahoo Sports: Yahoo Sports Report: MLB to require all non-playing personnel be vaccinated for COVID-19 for playoffs. “Major League Baseball will require that all non-playing personnel be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to access the field or any other restricted area in the playoffs, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported on Friday night.”
AP: Yanks, Rockies deal with COVID surges after All-Star break. ” For the first time in months, COVID-19 is creating chaos around Major League Baseball. The Yankees and Rockies are dealing with coronavirus outbreaks sidelining a total of 10 players and two coaches, including New York slugger Aaron Judge and Colorado manager Bud Black, as baseball attempts to resume play following its All-Star break.”
CNET: Amazon to stream 21 regular-season Yankees games on Prime Video. “New York Yankees baseball is coming to Amazon Prime, at least for those in the New York area. The e-commerce giant announced on Wednesday that it will be offering 21 regular-season broadcasts of Yankees games to Prime members in New York state, Connecticut, northeast Pennsylvania, and north and central New Jersey.”
Tubefilter: YouTube To Exclusively Broadcast 21 Major League Baseball Games This Season. “YouTube is back up to bat with Major League Baseball. The duo’s long-running partnership will see YouTube exclusively air 21 games from the upcoming season.”
WTOP: Baseball to return to Nationals Park — but without fans, for now. “Baseball fans that have eagerly waited to catch a Washington Nationals home game will likely have to wait a little longer. The D.C. government has approved the Nationals to play home games in their park this season, but there will be no fans in the stands because of the on going pandemic.”
Sports Video Group News: MLB Film Room Powered by Google Cloud Adds 700,000 New Videos. “Major League Baseball today made over 700,000 new videos available on MLB Film Room powered by Google Cloud for fans and media to search through, watch, create their own highlight reels and easily share with their personal communities by embedding on their websites, posting to Twitter, Reddit and Facebook or sending via email and text.”
SportBusiness: MLB rolls out expanded digital video archive. “Major League Baseball this week is widely debuting the MLB Film Room, a new digital video archive product aimed at enabling far greater user customization and distribution of the the league’s extensive film library. Powered by Google Cloud and a specific outgrowth of a large-scale deal struck earlier this year between MLB and the technology giant, the MLB Film Room will feature a publicly accessible library with more than 3.5m baseball highlights and nearly three dozen filters to locate specific plays.”
The Athletic: MLB TV ratings increase over last season, led by women and youth. “That Major League Baseball TV ratings are up in the first month of the abbreviated 2020 season is somewhat of a modest surprise, given the sport is competing with NBA and NHL playoffs and a crush of political and pandemic news — not to mention the longstanding narrative of a graying sport in decline. But what is even more notable is the demographics fueling the rise: women and younger people, two groups that did not exactly flock to baseball in recent years (if not decades). The increases are seen in both national ratings, such as ESPN’s, and across the regional sports channels that air the bulk of MLB games.”
ESPN: Sources: MLB commissioner warns of shutdown if coronavirus isn’t better managed. “Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred told MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark on Friday that if the sport doesn’t do a better job of managing the coronavirus, it could shut down for the season, sources familiar with the conversation told ESPN.”
Washington Post: Nats learning that the coronavirus sets the terms, and the terms are constantly shifting. “The Marlins were temporarily shut down because up to 15 players and two coaches have tested positive for the virus. The Nationals were scheduled to play in Miami this weekend, took a stand and never had to go any further. In one news release Tuesday, MLB shelved the Marlins and the Philadelphia Phillies and set up a matchup between the New York Yankees and Orioles in Baltimore. The Nationals keep finding themselves at the center of this rocky restart.”
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