MLB.app a big deal (IMO)
I'm not a sports fan but I think that MLB app demo'ed yesterday is actually a big deal that will drive iPhone sales. The most interesting thing will be the real time clips and playbacks. Considering baseball is 90% boring and 10% action you could watch 10x more baseball than before and not miss anything. Kind of replaces sports center.
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But somehow I don't think requiring constant interaction to view short, not-quite-live excerpts on a minuscule screen... as being the future of sporting entertainment.
In fact, the whole concept is about as "anti-baseball" as you can get. They tried showing condensed versions of games on TV a few years back. It received abysmal ratings.
Scores and highlights make a lot more sense in my mind. The overlap between those who want to constantly tinker to watch short clips on a tiny screen, and those who like the whole experience of baseball, is fairly small. On the other hand, catching up on the entire game after the fact would be great, as long as constant interaction wasn't required.
Yea but you know the sports junkies. I play poker with some guys that have the TV on the main game and computer up with yahoo feeds of other games. I think if someone can get push scores with push video highlights to the phone wherever they are that will be be enough to get a bolus of sports junkies to buy an iPhone.
The only satellite TV I've really been watching is sports... Tennis and football(soccer). I like to leave it on the screen, and go on with gaming, doing stuff on my Mac, etc. Once I figure it out I'd like to put it up on our retail store's TV thingys.
I'm no jock, but definitely you *gotta* have sports up and running in the background when playing cards!!!
I couldn't care less about the other nonsense on TV, say talk shows, TV news, etc. etc. I'd rather YouTube, iTunes Store, buy/rent DVDs, etc. But live/ games I don't know the results yet sports in the background is nice.
This being Major League Baseball, I'm assuming there's some kind of fee or subscription involved?
Probably. However a subscription may be against Apple's SDK policy as MLB could distribute the app for free and get revenue through subscription and Apple wouldn't make a dime. I would guess there is a (somewhat) significant upfront cost to the app and no subscription.
This being Major League Baseball, I'm assuming there's some kind of fee or subscription involved?
I don't think so. If I'm not mistaken, video highlights are free on their website.