Keep Your Ball on the I
BIRCO. You have probably never heard of it, but MiLB's potential new Internet holding company sits at the heart of a battle between MLB and Minor League Baseball over the future of minor league baseball that will affect how you see the game for years to come.

Brian ROSS
for SZ.

09.08.08 - In seven days, a hotly contested national election is going to come down to a decision in Florida, and it has nothing to do with anyone named McCain or Obama.

It is happening behind closed doors, and, regardless of which side wins, the outcome is guaranteed to affect the future of professional baseball, major and minor, forever. Beyond steroids. Beyond the 1994 strike. The Internet is money, and power. It is the latest combat zone in the Baseball's Hundred Years War between MLB and MiLB for control of millions of eyeballs and wallets of minor league baseball fans.

The minor leagues lead the way to a new baseball boom, adding more than 11 million fans in less than a decade through huge improvements in facilities, better community outreach, and keeping the public informed via their websites on the Internet. Now, Major League Baseball, which pays the salaries of minor league players, but receives little other than a 6% ticket assessment from minor league teams, is moving to turn MiLB into a larger profit center for MLB.

At the same time, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (The NA or MiLB), the organization that represents all of the leagues and teams of affiliated minor league baseball, is scrambling to find a way to secure its Internet web content, which usually goes by the buzzwords "Intellectual Property."

Pat O'Conner, the new President of the NA is working hard to convince his member teams to move their websites to the Baseball Internet Rights Company LLC (BIRCO), a holding company that will be owned by the NA and will be operated by Major League Baseball Advanced Media L.P. (BAM), an holding company of the MLB that operates MLB.com.

The NA has met with unusual resistance from its member clubs since 2004 when the move to consolidate MiLB on the Internet began. It has until September 15, 2008 to get the deal done. Over the off-season they must terminate their independent websites, and conform their ticketing systems and advertising on the internet to work with MiLB.com for the 2009 season.

Before discussing why there is so much controversy surrounding BIRCO, there is a story in the telling of this story that is important to know.

Sourcing

MLN has interviewed numerous people in the front offices, league offices and national office over the years since 2004 when the push to bring all of the team websites together under BAM. In the last few weeks, we have reached out to all sides of the BIRCO deal.

An offer was made to the NA to interview O'Conner for this story. Other than a brief summary of the benefits of BIRCO, O'Conner's only comment to any of the specifics of this deal was: “It's none of your business. If someone decided to break their confidence and talk to you that's their business, but your not going to get the deal for my company out of me." Then he hung up the phone.

The NA did not respond to our emails or telephone calls for further response. We offered to provide a forum for another member of the NA in favor of BIRCO to speak on the record about why it is good for the owners, and good for the game of baseball. No one responded to our offer, which was extended through Sunday evening.

O'Conner and the NA contend this is just a private business deal. Others contend that BIRCO and the deals being made with MLB and BAM so reshape the face of baseball that the public has a right to know how it affects the way in which fans will see the minor league game, and the game of baseball as a whole.

People working in MiLB leagues and teams feel the pressure being exerted in the highly charged political atmosphere surrounding the BIRCO deal. This has caused many of those with whom we spoke recently, those who disagree with, question or challenge BIRCO, to speak on the condition of anonymity, for fear of retaliation against themselves or their clubs by the NA or MLB. Their requests have been honored.

Simplifying

The deal for BIRCO is complex, and significant in the history of the professional game of baseball. In a nutshell, we believe that it can be summarized best this way:

MLB is trying to reshape MiLB baseball to focus the minor league fans on the MLB game, and return fans to those halcyon days when fans ignored their local market teams and slavishly watched the superstars on broadcast television.

There will be no new games on the national broadcast networks, but MLB's new entry, the Baseball Channel, debuts in 2009. That there has been so much pressure to get the BIRCO deal done before the 2009 season and the debut of that network would not seem to be a coincidence.

While BIRCO is being explained as a consolidation of MiLB's many independent websites into a unified whole, it is really more about digital plumbing. The websites of the minor league clubs are content pipelines that carry text and pictures right now, but, within the next half decade, will be streaming lots of video, more than likely for a fee, to millions of baseball fans across North America. MLB wants control of those pipelines. The NA, for its part, would also like to capitalize on those pipelines as well.

When you work with the only legal monopoly approved by the U.S. government though, the game is played on their turf. While there are owners fiercely fighting to maintain the independence of their teams and leagues, many see MLB acquiring control of MiLB.com as inevitable. One owner used the old cliche to express it best: "You can't fight City Hall."

Yet, surprisingly, many owners are. Here is the fascinating story of why.

Continued...

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