MLB.com streams baseball to iPhone, iPod, maybe sparking new business model

MLB.com will begin live streaming select baseball games to the Apple iPhone 3G S and iPod touch (incorporating the new OS 3.0) via its existing $9.99 At Bat 2009 application (see below), reports The New York Times.  But one of the most interesting aspects is the possibility it will spark a new business model for cellular applications, as discussed by ReadWriteWeb.

The MLB.com At Bat application will enable iPhone and touch users to view two free non-local games — chosen by MLB — every day.  Local games will be blacked out.

Additional games will be available as the season progresses, and it’s assumed that some games will require a fee.  The games may be viewed via WiFi or AT&T’s 3G network, which is interesting because AT&T and Apple have forbidden SlingPlayer Mobile from streaming videos from home computers to the iPhone via 3G; only WiFi streaming is allowed.

Pay-for statistics business model?

Marshall Kirkpatrick, the vice president of content creation and the lead writer at ReadWriteWeb (one of my favorite weblogs), writes that At Bat 2009 could herald a new business model where people would be willing to pay for statistics and other data — just as MLB.com offers a huge amount of statistical information about baseball games as part of its cellular application.

MLB.com At Bat 2009 offers such statistics as real-time scores, pitch-by-pitch (see top right), box scores and, game summaries.

Kirkpatrick writes, “The iPhone and Android platforms are brilliant for scrolling and zooming through layers of data in ways that print, TV and radio could only dream of.  Mobile, touchscreen and hand-held beats a Web page on the desktop computer too for data visualization.”

Mobile TV more than just “TV”

I’ve written previously about new ways to enhance value for mobile TV.  So far, mobile TV “innovation” mostly revolves around made-for-cellular programs, rather than much video + data integration.

Using SMS to vote for reality TV performers is about the best cellular operators and content providers have been able to come up with.  In other words, not much.

We’re seeing the television industry beginning to offer sets with Ethernet ports and widgets from Yahoo for accessing Web content (see below), as I’ve written in my Internet Evolution column.

Unlike TVs, cellular phones are made for data, duh.  It’s a natural device for integrating data with all type of videos.