Dear MLB: Figure it out.
Dear MLB,
I have a problem, and I think you can fix it for me. I find it hard to find a good source for MLB highlights. I can't find them anywhere. I look all over youtube, all over the blogs, but nothing can be found.
I know they are on MLB.com, but lets face it, your website is horrible to watch videos on.
Let's go through a scenario:
Step 1: I click on the video I want to watch
Step 2: An ad pops up, I am forced to watch it, it says my video begins in 30 seconds.
Step 3: I watch my 18 second clip.
OR
Step 3.5: The clip starts to play and it plays the wrong video, I click on the right video,again, repeat steps 1-3
Your videos aren't easy to find on your website either. I had to go to the scoreboard, find the highlights, then find my clip.
Flash video sucks, and it doesn't work on mobile devices, or the new iPad. So you just lost a huge audience right there.
Solution: Stop Being YouTube Nazis. Put your god damn videos on YouTube. Let them be embeddable. Let people share them. Let people comment on them easily.
The more views on your videos the more likely people are to pay attention and like baseball again.
Remember that cool clip of the Fan with the Mullet taking out the guy carrying nachos? No. You dont. No one does, because you took it off YouTube.
If something goes viral on youtube, it is good for baseball. People will want to pay more attention. People are watching Mascots at basketball games because they want to see more cheerleaders get eaten.
I don't have all the time in the world to go through your website, and look for clips and watch all of your advertisements.
Especially if I am on the go, all I want to do is search on youtube for, "Royals vs Twins Highlights". Look up by date, and boom, I have the latest highlights.
If you make them embeddable you get more people talking and commenting on baseball than you have in years. And it won't be about steroids. Hopefully. It would be on top plays, home runs, fans with mullets knocking over other fans with nachos. It would be a good thing.
You can advertise on youtube too. I know this may be a new concept to you. But you could run maybe a 5 or 10 second ad before the clip, and make money off of it. Let's face it, no one wants to watch a 30 second clip of Jack in the Box before every video. If I wanted to watch that then I would just turn on the TV and watch Sports Center. Plus, Jack in the Box tastes terrible.
You can run banner ads across the bottom of your video. And the more places that embed your video, the more likely people will see your ads.
The more times its embedded, the more viewers, the more people pay attention to baseball.
My guess is the Toronto Raptors Mascot has more views than all of your highlights and clips on your website.
So if you want to join the NFL, and the NBA, let your videos be embeddable, put them on youtube, and get the Fans back into the games.
Kudos for not taking down every video of the fan being tasered, it's a miracle people were actually talking baseball in May, usually by then no one cares because the season is so damn long.
Just do us all a favor, lets your players talk on twitter, let your videos be shared on youtube. No one wants to follow MLB beat writers on twitter if all they talk about are links to their articles.
This is a new age of media, got on the boat or fall below soccer, it is your choice.