Major League Baseball has turned to Facebook to promote its online subscription product. The question is, does this partnership signal that Facebook is looking to become a major content distributor, particularly in the lucrative digital sports realm?
According to AllThingsD.com, Major League Baseball has begun offering fans access to free streaming of a variety of spring training games as part of a promotional campaign that will run through the end of March. The hope is to entice more Facebook fans to subscribe to MLB’s online subscription service which costs $120 per season.
But per AllThingsD, MLB is mulling whether to stream a game on Facebook each week during the 2011 season which begins on March 31. That could become a precedent-setting move that could impact how live sports are delivered on the Web, given Facebook’s enormous clout.
The social networking giant already sounded alarms in the online movie rental space last week when it announced a deal with Warner Bros. to stream the movie The Dark Knight.
