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During the past 20 years, the author has watch China move from being a developing country into an industrial superpower
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Get Four
|  | SEPTEMBER 23, 2004
By Tom Lowry Watching Baseball Hits on the Go Want to see Bonds's 700th homer or today's best game? For 99 cents, you can soon download such video clips to your PDA or phone Following the lead of Apple's (AAPL ) iTunes online music store, Major League Baseball will announce on Sept. 23 that it's launching a 99-cent video-download service of game highlights, BusinessWeek Online has learned. The first-of-its-kind service, just the latest online video offering from MLB, will launch with about 200 clips from the entire season, lasting several minutes each. They can be purchased at mlb.com and then downloaded into a personal digital assistant or a cell phone so fans can watch highlights on the move -- a sort of ESPN SportsCenter for the commuter class. TESTING FANS' APPETITES. The highlights will include those breathtaking plays of the day. League officials are anticipating big sales, for example, of the clip of slugger Barry Bonds's historic 700th home run on Sept. 17. Another offering will be a 99-cent audio wrapup of the day's games, a clip that can be downloaded to MP3 players. The digital-rights protections built into the service will allow fans to download the clip only once into a portable device. The file can't be swapped to another device. It's unclear what the appetite will be for such a service, given the amount of game highlights available around the clock on TV. Of course, full games are available on TV, too, but MLB.com has signed up 300,000 subscribers this season -- who pay from $14.95 a month to $79.95 for the season -- for its Webcasts of live games. That's double the number of subscribers it had in 2003. GRAND SLAM? A separate service allowing fans to watch just a single game for $3.95 has racked up 200,000 downloads so far this season, vs. 40,000 for all of 2003. MLB.com had revenues of $92 million in 2003. Since launching in April, 2003, Apple iTunes has sold 125 million songs at 99 cents a pop. MLB is hoping its own parade of hits will be downloadable gold.  Lowry is Media editor for BusinessWeek in New York Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
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