Google Cloud and Major League Baseball struck a deal earlier this month to extend their partnership that focuses on MLB’s media products, and properties, mainly MLB.TV and their other various media platforms.
MLB and Google have been successful in recent years expanding on their current model and making it accessible and increasingly innovative. Its strategic cloud provider plans to continue accelerating worldwide delivery efforts to continue delivering real-time, personalized experiences for fans of MLB around the world.
This contract will use a wide array of products including Anthos, BigQuery, Cloud Armor, Looker, and Google Cloud Media APIs, which are critical components for producing live and on-demand video workflows. MLB will also launch Google Cloud’s Media CDN, which is a platform derived from YouTube’s infrastructure to deliver ‘immersive experiences’ to fans of MLB.
The partnership has many key markers that make this deal such a win-win for Google Cloud and MLB:
Enhanced Video Experiences: In the streaming era, direct-to consumer digital media experiences continue to grow in popularity as more audiences primarily consume content online. MLB’s decision to expand its partnership with Google Cloud will enable the creation of even more innovative and engaging content for the league’s media products, including MLB.TV. MLB will leverage Google Cloud’s global infrastructure and solutions such as Media CDN and Media APIs to drive this innovation.
Media Supply Chain Agility: Expected to be powered in large part by Google Cloud, MLB’s media supply chain will enable the flexible creation, management and distribution of content. This will help MLB stream content at faster speeds, with minimal latency and provide seamless packaging of content for consumers. It will alsobe able to securely deliver video experiences to a multitude of end points around the world.
Personalized Fan Experiences: Leveraging Google Cloud’s extensive expertise in data, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML), MLB will gain real-time insights to continue improving the fan viewing experience. For example, MLB will be able to continue organizing and tagging its vast historical collection of baseball footage in the Major League Baseball Film & Video Archive, which will allow archivists a more seamless process and keep making it easier for fans to search and view highlights from the past on platforms like MLB Film Room. MLB will also be able to provide more personalized viewing experiences and recommendations based on Google Cloud’s AI models.
“Google Cloud has been an outstanding partner to baseball, helping us innovate platforms that provide our fans with exceptional real-time experiences, from Statcast to Film Room,” said Commissioner of Baseball Robert D. Manfred, Jr. “With their leading expertise in everything from data analytics to machine learning, this partnership provides us with an unmatched extension of technological resources. Now we can continue collaborating with Google Cloud as a means of further delivering unparalleled digital experiences for our fans.”
Major League Baseball was the first professional sports league to live stream a complete regular season schedule, and the league has since continued to pour money into tech partnerships, aimed at improving the fan experience over the last two decades.