Remember way back in February, when Yahoo and the Mets announced a new partnership that, even in an era defined by flop-sweaty digital media ideas, was particularly flop-sweaty? The idea was this: Yahoo would launch a subscription-based site covering the Mets and only the Mets, and that site would feature all sorts of exclusive content that Yahoo would pay the Mets $3 million for the privilege of receiving. So how’s that going so far?
Not at all, it seems. According the New York Daily News, the site, which was originally meant to be called The Queens Baseball Club but has since become The Flushing Meadows Baseball Club, has failed to launch despite the MLB season being almost two months old. The report does say, however, that the site is currently scheduled to finally get off the ground on June 10.
The hold-up seems to have occurred because someone, either with the Mets or MLB, failed to make the financial particulars of the deal entirely clear to the league office. From the Daily News:
That issue appears to be the “future” revenue made in the deal. The Mets acted as an independent operator in this deal, going outside the MLB umbrella. Either MLB bean counters didn’t pay attention to what the Mets were negotiating or they were blindsided.
When MLB realized what was going down, it wanted more of its teams involved in a similar deal with Verizon/Yahoo. Finding a way to accomplish this slowed the launch of “TFMBC.” Now the process of getting other teams involved in a similar digital platform has begun. The Rangers, Indians and Angels are all reported to be interested.
It’s always fun to see another chapter added to the annals of Mets incompetence, but if this one ends with the rest of the league ripping off their idea and convincing other additional outlets to start paying for coverage, then I guess you ... have to hand it to them?
[NYDN]