MLB.com By The Numbers: Subscription Sales Up 45 Percent; Nearly $1 Million From iPhone
This story was written by Staci D. Kramer.
Updated:Three weeks into the 2009 baseball season, MLB.com is doing a lot better than Major League Baseball's other New York-based franchises. According to numbers released by the league's digital business MLBAM, subscription sales are up nearly 46 percent year-over-year to 400,000-plus for premium live game products MLB.TV and Gameday Audio. (MLBAM doesn't break out the subscribers between video and audio or monthly and annual.)
With that increase, it's not surprising that video delivery is up, too127.2 million streams, up 136 percent over 53.8 million in the first three weeks of the 2008 season.
Some other stats worth noting:
Mobile use is definitely on the uptick: on April 25, MLBAM says its mobile network hit a single-day record 31.1 million page views and that it has broken 20 million at least seven times. MLB.TV also has delivered more than 4.1 million video streams, including real-time highlights to team alert subs. (Team alert subs are up 35.5 percent.)
No numbers but MLBAM says MLB.com At Bat 2009 is the top-selling sports app in the iPhone app store. Dan Frommer reports that MLBAM has sold 130,000 downloads at $10 a pop for gross revenue of $1.3 million, about $910,000 after the 30 percent rev share with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). The lite version has been downloaded about 220,000 times.
MLB.com averaged 9.4 million daily visitors in the first three weeks, up roughly 30 percent.
By Staci D. Kramer