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Major League Baseball Dumps Silverlight For Flash

Posted by kdawson on from the silverlight-in-the-pan dept.

christian.einfeldt writes "This week, Major League Baseball will open without Microsoft's Silverlight at the plate, according to Bob Bowman, CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which handles much of the back-end operations for MLB and several other leagues and sporting events. The change was decided on last year but was set to be rolled out this spring. Among the causes of MLB's disillusionment with Silverlight were technical glitches users experienced, including needing administrator privileges to install the plugin (often impossible in workplaces). Baseball's opening day last year was plagued by Silverlight instability, with many users unable to log on and others unable to watch games. Adobe Flash already exists on 99% of user machines, said Bowman, and Adobe is 'committed to the customer experience in video with the Flash Player.' MLBAM's decision to dump Silverlight is particularly problematic for Microsoft's effort to compete with Adobe, due to the fact that MLBAM handles much of the back-end operations for CBS' Webcasts of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and this year will do the encoding for the 2009 Masters golf tournament."

1 of 388 comments (clear)

  1. MLB not particularly professional by notaprguy · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    It's pretty low class of MLB to slam Silverlight. Flash and Silverlight both have strengths. Flash's biggest strengths are ubiquity and a fairly large number of "developers" who know how to use it. Flash's weaknesses is that it's a hariball with no real programming model. Silverlight's strengths is that it's a real platform - an extension of .NET - with good and improving tooling support and huge numbers of potential developers who know .NET. Silverlight's weaknesses are tjat it is not yet on as many machines as Flash (but it will eventually...Microsoft won't give up) and that it's just more immature. For MLB to throw around innuendo about the performance or reliability of Silverlight is low class and obviously not credible given how well Silverlight worked for the Olympics, NCAA's and in many other places. If I were Adobe I'd be worried. Flash will lead for a while longer but Silverlight is fundamentally better as a platform and Microsoft won't give up.