Major League Baseball's Obsession With Cashing In On Everything Has Harmed The Game's Popularity Online

from the let-it-go... dept

I don't often mention it here, because it's way off-topic, but I'm a bit obsessed with baseball -- and only rarely does that cross over into a Techdirt related topic, such as when MLB tried to claim it owned stats (spoiler alert: it does not). Anyway, a month or two ago I came across a wonderful Twitter feed called @Jomboy_ who mostly tweets out (funny and clever) stuff about the NY Yankees, but also every day or so puts out really amazing and hilarious "breakdown" videos about events throughout baseball. These vignettes are usually less than two minutes long, and frequently feature what appear to be his amazingly accurate lip-reading skills (not to mention capturing little things happening in the background) and also a bit of well-placed profanity (if you happen to be listening in a workplace that might not appreciate that). I usually watch them on Twitter, but for embedding purposes, it's easier to use YouTube (where he also posts the videos), so I'll use some examples from there (and intersperse a few, because if you like baseball, they're wonderful). Here's one of his "breakdowns" of the only "intentional balk" I've ever seen:

I even randomly tweeted out that any baseball fans should check out his account just last week. And, of course, nothing in all of that makes this a Techdirt story. But I was somewhat amazed, just a day after I tweeted about Jomboy, to see an article at Fangraphs that is (1) all about Jomboy (whose real name is apparently Jimmy O'Brien) but, more importantly (2) totally relevant to Techdirt. Basically, it tells the story of how Major League Baseball's obsessive desire to own and control everything (see earlier note about its silly, years-long failed battle to own freaking stats) is contributing to baseball's continuing failure to be of any interest at all to a younger generation -- in part because baseball content rarely has shown up on social media.

This might sound a bit surprising to folks who do follow the sports business market. From the outside, many people have pointed out that Major League Baseball was really the first major sports league to embrace the internet -- and it did so successfully from a business standpoint. It built out MLB Advanced Media, which was such a good platform that other leagues even started using it, leading to it being called BAMTech, and Disney buying a majority share in 2017 for a big chunk of change. And, to be clear, MLB does a really good job with its streaming platform, that seems to work really well. But with that platform came way too much control -- and it has leveraged that to shut down things happening outside of its control. And that includes a lot of fan stuff.

“Because they have such a successful system within, they neglected every other social media because they have their own platform,” says O’Brien. “You couldn’t find a single MLB highlight on YouTube. There’s kids now that grew up not seeing baseball highlights for 10 years because they would have to go to MLB.com. Did you ever try to embed an MLB video back in the day? Or share it with a friend? It was, like, impossible.”

MLB has (thankfully) loosened the rules a bit over the past couple years, but only if you don't make any money:

Until 2017, YouTube content like Jomboy’s would be unthinkable. And while rules are far more relaxed in 2019, there’s still no way baseball channels can monetize directly through the platform. MLB will claim and remove their videos, and after an arduous appeal process, the videos will either remain off the site or re-emerge days later with revenue split between the creator and MLB.

And of course, that means that copyright is stepping in and stopping fans from promoting the freaking game:

“MLBAM doesn’t make things too easy for us,” says Joseph Solano, another Yankees content creator who has found a following on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube under the name Joezmcfly. “All the time, they will put up copyright claims on my videos. It’s gotten to the point that I’d rather not monetize, just so that I can get the content out there for the people.”

And you certainly understand the instinct. Control and copyright are direct. "I control it, I monetize it." But one of the points we've tried to make going back two decades at this point, is that sometimes it helps to look at the bigger picture -- and often a big part of that bigger pictures is that giving up a little short term control leads to better long-term outcomes.

As the article notes, the other sports, while perhaps not controlling everything, have realized that letting fans actually do this kind of thing attracts more fans and more interest to the overall game. And yet, Jimmy and the others profiled in the article feel like it's an effort to promote baseball for free. That's nuts.

Of course, this is nothing new. It actually goes back decades. People today are amazed to learn this, but it used to be considered perfectly fine for fans or third parties to make merchandise with team logos and such. But in a series of lawsuits starting in the 1960s through the 1980s, sports leagues freaked out, and decided they wanted to license every damn use. And while that was short-term profitable for the leagues, it hurt the ability of fans to show their own support.

For years, one of the key themes around here is just that you don't have to get paid for every single use, and sometimes lessening control can lead to wider long-term benefits. Jomboy's great videos demonstrate that. Are they infringing on MLB's copyright? I'd argue they're clearly fair use (and, no, the lame "without express written consent" to make use of "accounts or descriptions of the game" is not an issue here as they are legal nonsense that is mostly meaningless) and thus, MLB shouldn't have any right to block the monetization efforts in the first place. But, in this day and age, it's just not worth making a fair use fight just to get your YouTube revenue, which is unfortunate. Now that I've discovered Jomboy, I'm hoping he continues to make these videos -- and it seems crazy that he has to hope that Major League Baseball will "let" him promote their sport in a fun, enjoyable way.

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Filed Under: baseball, control, culture, fair use, fans, jomboy

Companies: major league baseball