Baseball -- the killer app for audio over the Internet

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In past years, I depended on boston.com. I'd can go to their sports/redsox directory www.boston.com/sport/redsox and check the scores and the standings, even take a look at scores and box scores of previous games and see how the schedule looks for the rest of the year. Unfortunately, the site isn't  updated very often -- they still operate like a newspaper. I don't like having to wait four or five hours after the game or even until the next morning to see the results and all the details. If I could wait that long, I could wait for the next print edition of the Boston Globe or Herald.

Last year, I switched to espn, www.espn.com. Their coverage of major league baseball is excellent -- not just the availability of detailed stats and records of every team, but especially for their live pitch-by-pitch gamecasts. I can select any game at all and see in text what is happening as it happens. If I have a lot of work to do online, I keep one or more gamecast windows going in the background and check them every once in a while. Sometimes I watch the Red Sox on TV and keep the gamecast of the Yankees and/or Oakland going on my PC.

Now Major League Baseball has caught on. Their site -- www.mlb.com -- has grown to the point that it beats ESPN. There is a separate area with enormous detail about each team. When you go to www.redsox.com, you are really going to a sub domain of www.mlb.com They don't have live gamecasts, like ESPN, but they do have audio -- all the audio coverage you would ever want, and for a reasonable price.

This year, audio came of age. Radio broadcasts of every single major league game -- both live and archived. Yes, you can get the same audio by way of  ESPN, but ESPN will charge you $9.95 a month for a subscription by way of real.com, which includes lots of non-baseball stuff as well, that you probably aren't interested in. But if you go by way of  mlb.com, you can subscribe for the entire season for just $9.95. Now I can listen to the Red Sox or any other team in the background while writing an article like this. I can also run espn gamecasts of some games, while listening to the radio broadcast of another.

Baseball is one sport that works very well over the radio. It's easy to visualize what is happening, because usually one thing happens at a time. In football, basketball, and ice hockey, there are people doing things all over the game area at the same time. In baseball, the action usually centers on where the ball is. The pitcher pitches. Then the batter bats. Then the fielder fields. Yes, there's some supplementary action, with fielders positioning themselves in anticipation, and with runners taking leads and trying to steal. But a good announcer has plenty of opportunity to fill you in on all that. Based on a voice commentary, you can easily imagine what is happening. Much of the action, in fact is routine. When a line drive hits the ground in front of an outfielder, you know it's going to be a single. When the ball is popped up in the infield, you know it is going to be an out.  The physical details of the situation are often of no importance. Your imagination can easily fill in the blanks. In other words, baseball is great for radio. And hence baseball makes a killer app for streaming audio over the Internet.

And the large numbers of people who are now getting used to enjoying sports entertainment by way of Internet radio broadasts and archives, will be primed for other creative uses of audio over the Internet. The technology has been ready for five or six years, now finally there's an audience -- a very large and enthusiastic audience that other businesses should be able to serve and build on.

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