MLB admits they got this WRONG

MLB admits they got this WRONG

Here’s Brody Brazil. I suppose this video is going to be a criticism and a compliment in that order allin one. The criticism is something that Major League Baseball had as a policy for most of the 2010s in my opinion back then. They were getting it totally wrong. I still think they didn’t handle this right. But at least here in 2025, the compliment is they’re smart enough to see their mistakes and the commissioner Rob Manfred has come out to say we got this wrong. What is this, by the way? What am I even talking about here? Content creation or at least the distribution of digital content. for most of the 2010s when you know content became extremely popular on platforms like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram eventually and YouTube certainly the core of of all of this video in question but Major League Baseball wanted to control all aspects and basically all revenue and metrics of digital content. If there was a baseball highlight that appeared somewhere else besides MLB.com or one of the MLB platforms, Major League Baseball a lot of times would actively pursue getting that clip, getting that footage taken down. They only wanted their content, which legally they own the rights to and their teams own the rights to. They only wanted all of it to appear only on their platforms, nowhere else. They wanted again control of everything, aspects and revenue and metrics. Photos were fine. If we’re talking about images of content or somebody’s description of something, it wasn’t to that degree. It was simply video highlights. But video highlights often times are the gold. Did you see this? How about what happened last night? Here’s an example of this. Something crazy happened. Something historical happened. But if you posted it, and a lot of times the smaller accounts got away with it, but the larger accounts on social media, if they posted it, those video highlights were flagged and then claimed on social and then a lot of times videos here on YouTube were demonetized. That’s fine to a certain degree, but it got taken a step further with copyright strikes and threats against YouTube channels. MLB.com and MLB Advanced Media were the only places basically that you could find baseball highlights and breakdowns and footage. And yeah, there were still people talking about baseball, but it means so much more when you can actually show the example of what happened, show the clip here on the channel. That’s something that I still don’t do. I am still because of what happened here. I am still basically extremely cautious about using any baseball footage really or football footage because the NFL still has that rule. Hockey and basketball have been the only ones that are a little bit more open to allowing footage to be used. But baseball and football for the longest time, football still is, but baseball was so strong on this that it got me afraid. I don’t want my channel getting in trouble. In fact, I already had firsthand experience specifically with MLB and especially on the platform of Twitter. I was never using highlights and clips longer than 10 to 20 seconds. First off, I was only really showing clips of the Oakland A’s. That was the broadcast I was working on. I was trying to promote, hey, this is happening. Tune in to the game right now. I was certainly not posting entire at bats or innings. I had this firsthand experience a couple different times uncomfortably in the 2010s. All I was trying to do was share viral moments to drive the game. And yes, sometimes I’d post a video of something incredible that happened, a Yenna sespus throw from left field that was uh like a shot out of a cannon and reached home plate without even bouncing. Yeah, that would get 10,000 views and I don’t know four 400,000 impressions, whatever. The bottom line is it got so popular it would come back to me and then I would get in trouble. All I was trying to do was promote what we were doing with the television product I got in trouble from MLB. Some letters, some emails, some correspondence. Hey, stop doing that. You’re not allowed to do that, remember? But everybody else is doing it. I say I get in trouble for that. Got in trouble obviously with NBC because MLB was knocking on NBC’s door. So, they were they were actively trying to stop people from using their clips and using their footage. Now, what’s done is done. I’m not here to change the past. I will say I thought it was even a little bit petty when they started to go after me for using even animated GIFs, not GIFs, animated GIFs of all of this stuff. I stopped with the videos. I started GIFs and even got in trouble for that, too. But recently, Commissioner Rob Manfred was on the Pat McAfee Show. I think this was during the all-star break and you know Pat kind of set up this question beautifully. I’m sure he had some background and some researchers help him out with this question, but it is a thing in the content creation industry, the content sphere. What’s happening with baseball? Apparently, and I’ve not really found this out by myself. I’m realizing maybe that it’s happening. Baseball might actually be loosening up on its guard towards using video highlights. Here we go. Feels like your guys’ league as internet people was a league that didn’t want to see the internet become a big baseball place. I only say that because cease and desist were happening. There wasn’t a lot of videos being distributed. There wasn’t a lot of interviews of players. It almost felt like the MLB did not want the internet to kind of do their thing. Then over the last few years, it feels like and this has had to been a decision that you have made and people that have been around here a long time transitioned maybe into the most open uh league whenever it comes to the internet and digital. obviously signing boy obviously with how welcoming you’ve been to us. What went into that decision and do you believe like we believe that that is a great thing for the MLB? Well, you know it it it absolutely is a great thing for Major League Baseball 100%. Um, ironically in the early years we were, you know, very forwardthinking on internet delivery. You know, MLB.tv was the first over-the-top product. The problem is um we got into this thing where we thought we could drive everything to our platforms. Got it. Okay. So then when I became commissioner, you know, I came up a different side of the business. Some of the people you were referring to came to me and said, you know, we got this wrong. You know, we’re just in the wrong place. We’re trying to drive everybody here. The right strategy is to make sure we are where the people are. You got to go where people are going. And that shift has been a really good thing for us. A really good thing. We’ve enjoyed the hell out of it. We’ve enjoyed covering it. And obviously you know this now because you guys have leaned into it and your crew has. It’s like a lot of things are clips. Like our show is a clip show to some people where they just see clips and it doesn’t matter if it’s just the clips. At least they’re seeing our product. I like to see that you guys are doing the same thing with the MLB. The MLB. It’s Major League Baseball. Pat. Anyway, I digress. Um and that’s the thing. Highlight shows don’t really exist in their prominence anymore. I mean, Sports Center is still around, but you’re not watching highlights on television. You’re getting them on social media. And if baseball is blocking highlights from being on social media, where exactly are fans staying up to date, all of this, again, I think it’s quite clear this was bad for baseball. To what Rob said, to what Pat suggested, where is the next generation of fans at? You have to go to where they’re at. As I just mentioned, old mediums were already losing steam. If you thought the kids were tuning into Sports Center to make sure they saw how their favorite baseball team was doing, they were not. If you were really trying to gatekeep everything and keep it under MLB.com’s umbrella, who logs on to MLB.com for baseball highlights by default? Again, some people do. I’m not suggesting that they don’t. I’m just saying that by default, I don’t think that’s the number one place people are going. This was an old way of thinking that persisted. This was an old approach. This was a, hey, we’ll control this. We’ll control the narrative. We’ll control the content. We’ll control the numbers. We’ll get all the ad revenue for this. We won’t even let one one little squeak get out. We’re going to we’re going to monetize everything. It’s not possible. That was an old way of thinking that you could control everything on the internet. Obviously, you can’t. So, how do we draw the new lines? How should this optimally be? I don’t want to close this out and say, “Well, they got it wrong and now they’re right.” I think there are some good, clear lines that should have always been set, but now they can be reestablished. Number one, creators should be able to use baseball footage, highlights, interviews, whatever they want, so long as they’re not abusing this. Like, there is that gray area. You can’t use full innings. You can’t necessarily use a full game. But if you’re just using an atbat or one play or something that seems reasonable and you’re starting and stopping it and maybe you’re talking about it or you’re replaying it or you need the footage to make your point, like if you’re using footage to make new material, pretty good. I don’t see anything wrong with that. That should be allowed for Major League Baseball. Don’t be afraid of the creators with 100,000 subscribers, 5 million subscribers. Embrace them. They’re embracing you. Embrace them. I’m not suggesting that it’s okay for anybody to upload full games or full interviews or totally steal somebody else’s material. That’s never been okay. That’s not what I’m talking about here. To Pat’s point, clips, using clips, being able to use clips that you add something to. That’s the other thing. It’s not just me showing you a Ronald Akuna Jr. whatever, stolen base, home run, great catch. It’s me adding some context, my own opinion to that clip. Baseball has to be okay with growth as as the main impact here. Baseball has to be okay with growth as the benefit. The benefit is not making every single possible dollar you can off every single click and view and and what your advertisers are hoping for. Baseball has to be okay with overall growth. understand that’s the net positive and not looking entirely in the mirror at themselves. So again, baseball did get this wrong. I hope that they’ve changed their ways entirely. I again I still don’t post baseball clips here on the channel. Still too nervous about it. Maybe I’ll try with a breakdown or two, but baseball definitely got that wrong over a full decade at least. I’m hoping that now into the 2020s and 2030s that they can actually get this right. Let me know what you think about all this in the comments section below. Is this something you’ve even noticed? Even if you’re not a content creator, if you’re only a a content consumer, have you noticed this change and shift? And what do you think about it? Let me know. Also, thumbs up down there. Helps me the video on the channel. Don’t forget to subscribe. No, those are thumbs up. Definitely subscribe. I’d love to see you back here next time.

Join channel, access perks ✅ http://brodie.bz/join
LEAVE ME A VOICEMAIL 📞 (833) 4-BRODIE

*Subscribe now, get more* 📺 http://brodie.bz/YouTube

[[ *MY PLAYLISTS* ]]
San Jose Sharks: https://brodie.bz/sharks
San Francisco 49ers: https://brodie.bz/49ers
San Francisco Giants: https://brodie.bz/giants
Golden State Warriors: https://brodie.bz/warriors
Howard Terminal Ballpark: https://brodie.bz/HowardTerminal
Oakland Athletics: https://brodie.bz/athletics

[[ *MY OTHER CHANNELS* ]]
*BRODIE BRAZIL AVIATION* ✈️ http://brodie.bz/Aviation
*HOME STUDIO PRO* 🎥 http://brodie.bz/HomeStudio

📸 *Instagram* ➡️ http://brodie.bz/IG
🐦 *X /Twitter* ➡️ http://brodie.bz/X
👍 *Facebook* ➡️ http://brodie.bz/FB

*Support this channel* 🎉 https://brodie.bz/PayPal

#mlb #baseball #media