Yahoo, Major League Baseball Ink Video, Advertising Partnership
MLB.TV Service to Appear on Yahoo Sports; Yahoo to Manage Ad Sales for 2009, 2010 Seasons
By Alex Weprin -- Broadcasting & Cable, 4/10/2008 4:46:00 PM
Yahoo and Major League Baseball Advanced Media inked a three-year deal that will bring MLB’s MLB.TV service to Yahoo Sports and see Yahoo manage MLB.TV ad sales for the 2009 and 2010 seasons.
MLB and Yahoo will split video-inventory ad sales for the first year of the deal.
Yahoo Sports will offer the MLB.TV service to 11 countries, including the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Germany on a co-branded player on Yahoo and MLB.com.
“This agreement exemplifies Yahoo as the partner of choice to premier media organizations, as we’re providing MLB.com an opportunity to extend its reach to the largest possible audience, while at the same time maximizing monetization of its video subscription product,” said Todd Teresi, senior vice president of Yahoo Publisher Channel, in a statement.
“Partnering with MLB.com allows Yahoo to offer our users an unmatched baseball experience and also presents our advertisers with a new opportunity to reach a large, engaged audience of baseball enthusiasts,” he added.
Yahoo will also distribute MLB’s FastCast, a daily roundup of the previous day’s games, and it can use MLB video content in other Yahoo Sports programming.
Pricing for the service on Yahoo will be the same as it is on MLB.com.
