2018 MLB Thread

[Red Fox 5]

Thought I would throw this up for the baseball fans out there.

So, not sure if anyone has seen MLB's new partnership with FB Live but I am forced to watch the Mets today on Facebook. Only on Facebook. All local broadcasts are not able to do the game. No SNY. What kind of bullshit, idiotic idea is this?

As someone who works and is doing bedtime with the kids in the evening I usually DVR gams and watch them at 9ish. How the hell am I supposed to do that on a FB broadcast game? How bout all the hundreds of thousands of "mature aged" Americans who simply dont do FB. How can they watch the game?

The announcers are like 4th rate. The comment section is flooded with ridiculous non fan bullshit. Who wants to put up with that when they want to relax and watch a game? Purely idiotic idea by MLB and FB.

If they want to test their sports platforms viability they should do so with college FB and BB. Both sports have tons of interest but outside the top major teams most teams arent nationally televised so it would be a benefit to get THOSE types games extra media on FB. If Marist had 2 additional games telecast on FB that would be a welcome bonus and cause excitement over the platform. being forced to watch a Mets game on an inferior broadcast to SNY is the opposite of excitement.

Anyway that's my rant. We can use this thread to talk about baseball for the 2018 season.

[marist77]

Bedtime won't be a problem since the FB games are afternoon only. I don't watch Mets nor do I have FB, so I'm a don't care. But then there's this: SNY to show replay of Mets’ Facebook-only game at 8 p.m

[Red Fox 5]

Apr 4, 2018 14:35:58 GMT -5 marist77 said:

Bedtime won't be a problem since the FB games are afternoon only. I don't watch Mets nor do I have FB, so I'm a don't care. But then there's this: SNY to show replay of Mets’ Facebook-only game at 8 p.m

I saw that about the replay but with conflicting reports so not sure. SNY.com does says "Mets 2018" from 8-11 tonight but on my live Spectrum channel guide it says Mets classics from 8-11.

Just seems like a very poorly rolled out idea. I get that media is moving more towards live streams on social media but at the same time one of the great enhancements of watching sports in the 21st century is the ability to pause or record it to watch around other life responsibilities. FB has totally taken that option off the table. If your watching the game and something comes up you miss the action ala watching in 1979.

If SNY is truly going to re broadcast tonight that helps mitigate that somewhat but if FB truly wants to horn into sports they need to come up with a platform that allows for replay/dvr ability. ESPN3 does this perfectly as they have the replay function available on a platform that doesnt include a score ticker to "spoil" the results for the fan.

[Red Fox 5]

Fan reaction to this is brutal. This is NOT popular even by those watching, on Facebook.

In addition there are only 86,000 people watching this game at its peak. Its exclusive so thats a 100% accurate number. An average Mets game has 300,000 viewers on SNY. Add in the Phillies viewers on Comcast SportsNet and those who subscribe to MLB.TV to watch these teams (with some assumptions) you can estimate 650,000-800,000 viewers for an average Mets Phillies game worldwide. So theyve managed to draw less than 15% of the normal audience for this ridiculous experiment. Even if you handicap today's games because its during the day and there was a rain delay its still less than 25% of the normal audience.