HBO’s much-hyped fifth-season premiere of Game of Thrones this month was a resounding success, not just with its record-high ratings but also the distinct lack of people hurling large objects at their screens. As any devotee of full rear nudity and beheadings knows, outages on the network's streaming service for cable subscribers, HBO Go, crippled last year's Thrones debut. Not this time around, and not on the network's new standalone digital streaming service. That's because HBO learned its lesson.

HBO Now is the network’s response to the rage induced by HBO Go constantly dropping streams last year during Thrones and new episodes of True Detective. As soon as the idea of a standalone service (once anathema to cable providers) became feasible, the company faced a decision. With 60 percent of its audience in the coveted 18-to-49 demographic, HBO had a lot at stake. Either the network could build HBO Now itself (modeled slightly after HBO Go’s architecture) or piggyback on a successful existing streaming network.

They opted for the latter, and the infrastructure didn't belong to Netflix or Time Warner or some other expected broadcast conglomerate. It was Major League Baseball's.

MLB Advanced Media, which has arguably the country’s most extensive and experienced broadband network for streaming live video, has been around since 2000 and is equally owned by the 30 MLB clubs. In addition to streaming most baseball games (more on that later), it handles the back-end duties for myriad other major sports. BAM, as it’s known in industry parlance, powers ESPN’s watch-anywhere app. It runs Turner Sports’ March Madness streaming. The World Wrestling Entertainment Network contracts out its $10-a-month service into BAM’s capable hands. Sony depends on BAM for PlayStation Vue streaming service. While the NFL is giddy about streaming a game on YouTube next season and the NBA’s League Pass service can’t even get all of its games into high-def, MLB is serving up 60 million streams on its Opening Day—a 60 percent bump from a year ago—with nary a hitch.

BAM is controlled by two people: MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and Bob Bowman, the league’s new president of business and media. Manfred took over in January from Bud Selig (who oversaw BAM’s birth back in 2000); Bowman just got a promotion from his last gig as CEO of Advanced Media. Bowman is still technically in charge of BAM, even with his updated business card, and that’s no accident. That titanic client list of BAM's would make its IPO worth billions. A $5 billion valuation would reach more than halfway to MLB’s $9 billion in total revenue from last year. You don’t make that kind of dough just by selling Cracker Jack.