Baseball looks toward a number of changes
Facebook Inc is in talks with Major League Baseball to live stream one game per week during the upcoming season, which could be a key win as the social media platform works to offer more live sports, according to two people familiar with the situation.
Facebook has pushed to sign deals with owners of sports rights to live stream their games, going after an audience that competitor Twitter Inc is also trying to capture, according to sports media consultants.
For social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, live streaming sports is key to attracting people since sports is one of the few types of content that people still watch live.
“Facebook is aggressively going after sports content and they are now one of a number of competitors to traditional media outlets that are going after sports programming,” said sports media consultant Lee Berke. “It makes perfect sense that they would be going after name brand properties like the MLB.”
By partnering with Facebook, MLB would get access to a young audience at a massive scale, consultants said.
The size of Facebook’s reach was a big reason Univision Communications Inc decided to use Facebook Live to live stream Mexican soccer matches in English, said Tonia O’Connor, chief commercial officer and president of content distribution at Univision. Under that deal, Facebook will live stream 46 matches by Mexican soccer league Liga MX in 2017. Terms were not disclosed. Over the past few months, Facebook has live streamed global basketball, soccer matches and table tennis.
In other MLB news, Commissioner Rob Manfred, angered and frustrated that the Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Tony Clark will not accept any rule changes for the 2017 season, threatened Tuesday to unilaterally impose new rules in 2018 if an agreement can’t be reached.
Manfred wants to implement a pitch clock, limit mound visits and change the strike zone, and if the MLBPA won’t agree to the changes next year, he said the new labor agreement empowers MLB to apply the new rules in 2018 without union approval.
Clark certainly took exception to Manfred’s comments and said rule changes already are expected to be implemented this season. There are plans for a two-minute limit this year for instant replay reviews. Pitchers can now signal for an intentional walk. And there will be pace of game warnings and fines.
Clark said in an e-mail, “I don’t agree that we’ve failed to cooperate with the Commissioner’s office on these issues. Two years ago we negotiated pace of play protocols that had an immediate and positive impact. Last year, we took a step backward in some ways (with the time of game increasing four minutes) and this offseason, we’ve been in regular contact with MLB and with our members to get a better handle on why that happened.”
Yet no matter when it arrives, these rule changes are inevitable. Managers and general managers think it will start with the 20-second pitch clock, which alone could dramatically change the pace of games.