Under the deal, which started March 31, Yahoo and MLB will share video ad selling responsibilities for the 2008 season. Yahoo also will distribute MLB.com's FastCast game highlight clips in addition to other MLB.com content. The site already has rights to player names, images, stats and video highlights for its fantasy baseball content. Mobile content rights are not included in the deal.
Jimmy Pitaro, Yahoo Sports General Manager, said: “Major League Baseball will designate a single point of contact to coordinate sales efforts. Reaching out to the league sponsors will probably be a starting point for us, we have a huge head start in that they're already sponsors".
In addition to running ads from typical sports sponsors like automakers, beverage purveyors and apparel brands, Yahoo anticipates feeding demographically or behaviourally targeted ads into the baseball streams.
