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Baseball Cracks Down on Fan Sites
serutan writes: "Looks like Major League Baseball has joined other players in the big-media content industry to crack down on fans who overstep their proper place as consumers. Anybody with a website dedicated to America's favorite pastime better read this story on Yahoo."
Now if this were about football (and I'm not talking about the kind of "foot"ball where you carry the ball) then I'd get upset.
But seriously, who cares about baseball anymore. It's not like the strike of '95ish didn't kill attendance at games, and there are more exciting sports to watch (australian rules "football" for example). Most of the people I know think baseball is a pain in the ass in the tv schedule, with games running 9 or whatever-the-hell extra innings.
That said, this is a brilliant move on their part, nothing like pissing off hardcore fans to drum up hatred against the the MLB and lower their tv ratings to the level of donahue's new show.
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The NFL is one of the few major businesses which has a modicum of sense. Consider this quote:
What the NFL realizes is that fan sites are good: they are free promotion (I know a few people who ran a Scottish Claymores fansite. When the club decided to do a new official site, they hired them to do it), and the people who run and read those sites are the hardcore fans, who either shell out hundreds of dollars a year for season tickets or who subscribe to the NFL Sunday Ticket.
Yet again baseball shoots itself in the foot, thanks to a management that has been slow to adapt to any change over the past 80 years. For instance, as late as 1930, none of the three New York teams allowed radio coverage of the games for fear that it would cut into the gate. It wasn't until the 70's that baseball teams began allowing televising of all games.
They're just mixing the great american pastimes of baseball and lawsuits.
Major League Baseball is aiming for mlb.com to be a supper site that meets all baseball fan needs. I would guess that the director of the mlb.com asked the legal division to rain in the none mlb.com sites a little bit with the aim of increasing their own sites hits and revenue.
This is a pretty good strategy for baseball actually. First is provides uniformity to there product. If all fans start there baseball related news gathering by going to mlb.com you get a central influence on news and hype. Second it produces general revenue. This is exactly what baseball needs right now. Of course no general revenue source can overcome the local revenue associated with ticket sales; but baseball needs to look for as much shared revenue as possible in order to reestablish parity. A fan site devoted to the Yankees is taking eyeballs from advertising that benifits all teams.
I have been converted. I think mlb.com is the best professional sports web portal. I used to go the WGN to listen to Cubs baseball on the web but mlb.com centralized web broadcasting of baseball games. I still can hear the Cubs with WGN broadcasters but I have the pay the $10 a season on mlb.com. For this $10 you get the ability to listen to every other team also. And I am guessing the revenue is shared.
Since I like the Cubs it is bad in a way that my dollars are shared but for all the fans of Yankees and Mets doing the same thing, it is good for me and the Cubs that some of their dollars are shared.
To me this is a case of operating within one's rights, to the detriment of one's business. Baseball has done this in spades for as long as I can remember, and it's finally beginning to affect the business.
I have had season tickets to a major league baseball team for the past ten years, meaning that during that time I have seen over 750 games (I've had to miss a few due to business trips, etc.). The basic attitude of the team and MLB in general, seems to be that fans are obligated to attend, regardless of how they are treated.
Probably the best example of this is the stadium's "security" policy regarding material one may bring to the games. I would like to bring in things like a score book, media guide, binoculars, sunscreen, pencils, etc., but they won't allow a bag larger than 8-1/2" x 11" (21.5 cm x 28 cm) into the stadium--even if you let them search the bag, or even empty it out at the feet of the inspector. The bag itself is not permitted, for some reason. However, they *will* allow women's purses and infants' diaper bags of any size, and they don't perform body searches or use metal detectors--whatever is in your pockets or under your clothes is yours to keep.
What they *think* they are accomplishing by this I cannot imagine, but I can say what they *are* accomplishing: As a result of this policy I can always tell a new, prospective fan, going to a game for the first time--I pass him walking back out to the parking lot as I am walking in, carrying the bag or knapsack he quite reasonably expected to be able to take to the game. Or I pass him at the inspector's station at the stadium entrance, presenting rational but useless arguments and expressions of surprise and disbelief to the bored workers there. As a business, the team has the right to set up rules for all those who enter, but the team shouldn't complain when no one bothers to come any more, and new fans prove difficult to attract. It's always been a puzzle to me how baseball owners could have business acumen sufficient to amass personal fortunes, yet run major league baseball as if they were the stupidest form of life on the planet.
This kind of behavior is rampant in MLB and, barring an unforeseen turnaround, may soon enable baseball to reach the popularity of those other major sports of the 1950's--boxing and horse racing.
it does not matter what they were using the profit for (to continue the existence of the site) they were using the site to get money. plain and simple. only a few sites were even contacted by MLB, and ofd those, ALL of them were using cafepress to sell unauthorized merchandise.
A friend of mine has been running PhilsPhans.com since the beginning of this year with a focus on forum discussions, in response to many people who complained about the forums at the official site being crowded with spammers. The site gathered popularity among Phillies fans pretty quickly, and soon a lot of users from the official Phillies forums switched to the little new site. About a month or so ago, he received a letter from the Phillies ordering him to shut down his site due to "trademark infringement"; their claim was that the word "phils" is their property, and thus he can't use it as part of the site's name. How could anyone trademark such a common word is beyond logic, but since he doesn't have the resources to fight this, so he's being forced to move the site to a different domain.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"