In part, this expresses a common public perception of startups: that branding and marketing are the critical early steps. It's the idea that everything starts with SEO and social media. Baseball teams don't have track records of disrupting industries...they have a fucking antitrust exemption and live off tax payer subsidized stadium deals. They all take the 3~0 pitch and don't bunt with two out. It's conservative money jumping on the startup hype and cashing in their star power
Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) is a company that has streaming video deals with HBO, Sony, ESPN, WWE, and the PGA Tour. They measure their non-baseball related revenue with 9 figures. Their streaming service exceeded Twitch in both number of streams and revenue in 2014. They are currently evaluating spinning-off as a company with a valuation in the neighborhood of $5 billion [1] . MLBAM actually is one of the best examples of a successful tech startup created by a pre-Internet company. But since they are a private company that never took venture capital, they are mostly ignored by people in our community. Granted the Dodgers are only 1/30th of MLBAM, but I think your overall view of baseball is outdated and in turn you might be overly cynical regarding this accelerator.
The primary assets of MLABAM are intellectual property rights (contracts for content). The business is resale and the revenue model is biased toward dividend type payouts rather than reinvestment for continued growth. This may make it a lucrative business line, but it doesn't make it a startup. It started on third base not ramen.
>The primary assets of MLABAM are intellectual property rights (contracts for content). The business is resale
You can say that about any number of startups that focus on delivering content: Netflix, Steam, Youtube, etc.
> and the revenue model is biased toward dividend type payouts rather than reinvestment for continued growth. This may make it a lucrative business line, but it doesn't make it a startup.
MLBAM has had both dividend payouts and reinvestment. They were started with a $77 million initial investment [1] and turned it into a $5 billion business in a decade and a half. You don't get that kind of growth without reinvestment.
> It started on third base not ramen.
Can't disagree, but isn't that the point of an accelerator? Isn't that supposed to be the differentiator between going to someone like Y Combinator before going to a VC? They are supposed to give startups a head start and guidance that they wouldn't normally receive in order to help them be more successful.
When Netflix was a startup, the disruptive idea was sending DVD's through the mail as often as you liked for a fixed monthly fee but only so long as you never had more than two at a time. YouTube stopped being a startup when Google bought them almost a decade ago. Since, it's seen incremental change but hasn't disrupted anything.
Neither was built on the value of exclusive rights to content. My understanding is that this is mostly true for s
Steam as well, but I don't know as much about its evolution. MLABAM didn't go through an accelerator so RoboCop is riding a unicorn on that one.
Techbiz is now a game of mad libs for patronizing capitalists.
Hey kids! Fill out this form along with thousands of others. If we fancy the way you fill it out and if you know how to play with computers dandily then we'll throw money at you like a sunday at the horsetracks.
Oh, some more pied piper hooli reference here and there to keep this cynicism timely and relevant.
