CBSSports.com is looking to entice more fantasy baseball players this season by offering something most fantasy products can’t: live baseball.
The site has inked a multiyear pact with Major League Baseball to offer its subscribers access to both live audio footage of all MLB games during the 2011 season and up-to-the-minute video highlights from MLB.com as games are being played.
Now, as fans follow their team’s progress in real time, they’ll be able to go beyond just live stats. Users will receive alerts when one of their players does something highlight-worthy—such as hit a home run—which they can then watch on CBSSports.com.
Or if one of their top relief pitchers enters a game in a key spot, fans can immediately tune in to that game’s live radio feed to see how he performs. More than 2,400 live radio broadcasts will be available throughout the season, which begins on March 31.
“People are going to find different ways to use this content,” predicted Rich Calacci, CBSSports.com’s svp, advertising sales. “What we are doing is making as wide a selection of content for our fantasy players available and letting them use it as they’d like.”
Calacci is betting that the live audio feeds may attract displaced baseball fans to sign on. “That’s a dynamic we really want to exploit,” he said.
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