Tag: mlb

MLB Brings Popular “At Bat” App To Daydream VR

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Major League Baseball (MLB) is bringing its popular At Bat app into VR for an immersive and interactive viewing experience for baseball fans. Soon to become available on Google’s Daydream VR platform, the app lets fans watch live games and simultaneously check up on real-time stats with multiple floating screens that they can turn to and zoom in. Unfortunately, the app is yet to support watching the games in 360-degree video, but there are other 360-degree content produced by MLB available in the app.

What Brands Need To Do
According to ComScore, the At Bat app is one of the most popular streaming services for sports, hogging the top spot on the total-grossing sports app chart in the App Store for years. While the choice of platform may limit its adoption, given the fact that only a handful of Android handsets currently support Daydream VR. it nevertheless underscores MLB’s willingness to experiment with the emerging medium and improve its content delivery so as to let viewers engage with their content more intensively.

Live sports are widely regarded as the last bastion against the declining live TV ratings, but with more and more sports leagues signing deals like this one to make their content available on digital platforms, more and more viewers are migrating to those new platforms as well. Therefore, brands seeking to reach sports fans will need to follow along by adjusting their media mix.

How We Can Help
Our dedicated team of VR experts is here to guide marketers through the distribution landscape. We work closely with brands to develop sustainable VR content strategies to promote branded VR and 360 video content across various apps and platforms. With our proprietary technology stack powered by a combination of best-in-class VR partners and backed by the media fire-power of IPG Mediabrands, we offer customized solutions for distributing and measuring branded VR content that truly enhance brand messaging and contribute to the campaign objectives.

If you’d like to learn more about how the Lab can help you tap into the immersive power of VR content to engage with customers, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Barrett ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: The Verge

Facebook Ramps Up Live Content With Weekly MLB Games

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook continues its aggressive push for more live video content as it signs a new streaming deal with the Major League Baseball (MLB) to stream 20 games this season. The broadcasts, drawn from a feed from one of the participating team’s local broadcast rightsholders, mostly consist of nationally telecast games and will go live weekly on Friday nights, starting with the match between the Colorado Rockies and the Cincinnati Reds tonight.

What Brands Need To Do
Rumors of Facebook talking with sports leagues and media owners to get more live sports content have been swirling around since this February. This MLB deal confirms the social giant’s play for live sports, which mirrors Twitter’s sports-focused strategy for live video as well.  Facebook has started to monetize its live video content by adding mid-roll ad breaks, which provides brands with a valuable channel to reach sports fans who are not reachable via traditional TV ads.

Live sports are widely regarded as the last bastion against the declining live TV ratings, but with more and more sports leagues signing deals like this one to make their content available on digital platforms, more and more viewers are migrating to those new platforms as well. Therefore, brands seeking to reach sports fans will need to follow along by adjusting their media mix.

 

Source: The Verge

MLB & Disney Acquired Streaming Rights For Leagues Of Legends Tournaments

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
BAMTech, a streaming tech company co-owned by Disney and the Major League Baseball, has picked up streaming rights to League of Legends tournaments, one of the biggest eSports franchises in the world. The company reportedly signed a deal north of $300 million with Riot Games for the exclusive rights to “stream and monetize” the massively popular video game tournament. In addition to taking over the tournaments’ distribution on existing streaming channels such as Twitch and YouTube Gaming, BAMTech plans to launch a dedicated streaming service for the LoL tournaments across various platforms.

What Brands Should Do
The massive acquisition underscores what a massive force of nature eSports live streaming has grown into in the media landscape. It easily commands millions of global viewers, a number that dwarfs most network TV programming today. In October, more than 43 million viewers worldwide watched online a League of Legends esports championship held at the Staples Center in LA. Some early-adopting brands, such as Coca-Cola and Geico, have been sponsoring eSports events to reach its young, male-skewing audience. More brands should consider leveraging the massive reach of eSports events to reach consumers via sponsorships or ads.

 

Source: The Wall Street Journal

MLB To Amplify Spring Training With Snapchat and Facebook’s Live Video

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The Major League Baseball (MLB) is embracing emerging media platforms to amplify the reach of its content. The league announced Friday that as part of a multi-year content deal with popular messaging app Snapchat, it will host a “Snapchat Day” later this month for its Spring Training games around the country, giving fans behind-the-scenes looks. Similarly, some teams, including the San Francisco Giants, Detroit Tigers, and Los Angeles Dodgers, are also experimenting with daily live broadcasts on Facebook to engage fans and drum up excitement using the Live Video feature Facebook just released for all users at the end of January.

What Brands Need To Do
The MLB is a leading force in bringing content into new media platforms to make it more accessible. Its internet and interactive branch, MLB Advanced Media, provides the backend infrastructure for a variety of OTT streaming services, including HBO Now, the WWE, WatchESPN, CBS Sportsline, and, of course, its own streaming service MLB.TV.  Now, the league is encouraging its players to embrace Snapchat and livestreaming as a way to bring fans closer to the game, something that most brands can learn a thing or two from.

 

Sources: Geekwire & Digiday

Snapchat To Debut New Content From Sophia Vergara And MLB

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: Variety & WSJ Blog

“Modern Family” star Sophia Vergara is coming to Snapchat with her own reality series Vergaraland. Co-produced by Fusion and Latin World Entertainment, the six-episode series promises a humorous look at the actress’ career from the perspective of her son.

Snapchat has also reportedly worked out a deal with Major League Baseball Advanced Media to introduce a weekly series of baseball-related video content. We first heard back in March that Snapchat is looking to broadcast live sport events, and this seems like a solid first step in that direction.

Ever since the beginning of this year, we have been witnessing Snapchat’s relentless push into original content to build out its media platform outside messaging. So it seems only natural that Snapchat is now getting Hollywood celebrities and sport leagues on board to boost awareness of its original content.

Led by Snapchat and Facebook Messenger, the messaging apps are racing to become full-fledged media channels. Although it seems still a bit early in the game to declare a winner, Snapchat is most definitely in the running with its vast popularity among Millennials and Gen Z, which means that brands trying to reach those young audiences need to take notice.

 

 

Exponential Interactive Focuses on Baseball Fans

Posted on by Lab Team

Ad intelligence group Exponential Interactive released the details of a study conducted in the month leading up to Major League Baseball’s opening day, revealing peculiarities of the fans of various teams in the process.  As it turns out: Yankees fans prefer rap; Mets fans prefer metal.  The details revealed stretched far and wide: Cleveland Indians fans are most likely to own a cat, Cubs fans are the most likely to own motorcycles, the Mets have the most female fans.  Internet activity was combined with outside data sets from Datalogix and others.  The title of “fan” was bestowed only on dedicated users who checked a specific team multiple times, and who lived in that team’s city or state.  The result was an interesting look at baseball fans and their respective locales which could prove useful for marketers in a number of fields as baseball season progresses through the summer.