The management of Major League Baseball sank to an all-time low when they signed an exclusive deal with Real Networks to provide access to local radio broadcasts for the 2001 season. Charging for these broadcasts is not a bad idea, and the $9.95 fee is certainly reasonable, but the choice of Real Networks is unthinkable. Not only has MLB tied their broadcasts to a single buggy software package (a deal with Yahoo or a similar aggregator would have allowed users a choice of Real Player, Windows Media Player, or Quicktime), they have also subjected their best customers—fanatics like me who are desperate to hear their favorite team’s radio broadcast—to the sleazy marketing tactics of one of the Internet’s least-competent companies.
Just now, I went to sign up for the $9.95 season package at real.com in preparation for the 3pm first pitch of the Padres-Giants game. Above the fold, so to speak, on the real.com home page, there is a large animation extolling users to download Real Player Plus and “catch every game”. Next to this graphic is a list of the real Player Plus features, including “access to every Major League Baseball game, all season long”. Real Player plus costs $29.70 for a six-month subscription (plus an automatic renewal at $4.95/month thereafter), three times the advertised subscription fee for the season.
Further down the page is a large “mlb.com opening day” graphic, with a “Live Audio of Every MLB Game” link just below it. There is no other mention of baseball on the page, so I conclude that this must be where I’m supposed to purchase the $9.95 package. Clicking this link launches Real Player. Apparently I didn’t have the right codec installed since it had to download an update and restart the player. On restart, it doesn’t remember which “movie” I had “requested”, so I go back to the home page and click the link again. After playing an uninspiring and uninformative ten second promo, the movie encourages me to “see the schedule now”. No instructions on how to see the schedule, but eventually I realize that I am supposed to click on the final frame of the movie. Clicking on this frame brings one of my open browser windows to the front, but the browser doesn’t navigate anywhere. Eventually I figure out that by closing all open browser windows before clicking on the freeze-frame, I can fool it into “working”.
A new browser window opens, and I am taken to a schedule of the day’s games, with instructions to click on “the links in the schedule below” to listen to a live broadcast. The Braves-Reds game is already in progress, so I click on the link to that audio feed. I still haven’t seen any instructions on how to buy the $9.95 package, so I suspect that this link will take me to a page where I can charge it to my credit card. Instead, Real Player launches and plays a movie informing me that I need Real Player Plus to listen to this broadcast, and instructs me to click on the movie to “DOWNLOAD NOW!”
So, apparently there is no way to buy the $9.95 package at the real.com website, or if there is, it is completely hidden from users. No doubt, many gullible baseball fans who have read about the $9.95 package advertised by Major League Baseball and Real Networks will go to the real.com website and get fooled into buying a software package which costs three times the advertised price. As anyone who has tried to download the free version of Real Player from real.com knows, this is a standard tactic of Real Networks. In fact, if you haven’t tried it before, try it now. In all my time on the web, I have never seen a process which was more openly hostile to users.
So anyway, I decided to head over to mlb.com to see if I can buy the package there. Host not responding. Try a few minutes later, and the server seems to have recovered. They are advertising that the live audio feeds are free for the first week, heaping more coals on the heads of the sinners at Real Networks. I know that I want the feeds for the whole season and would prefer to bite the bullet and pay now, so I click on the link to GameDay Audio. Apparently Major League Baseball knew about Real Audio’s trickery because they note very clearly in bold letters: “All Gameday Audio plays in RealPlayer 8 Basic”. Above this is a graphic pointing to the tiny, intentionally difficult to see link to the free Real Player Basic on real.com. To MLB’s credit, the Gameday Audio home page is very nicely done. Accessing all of the different feeds is easy as pie.
I don’t see a place to purchase the $9.95 package, so I decide to listen to one of the free feeds. Clicking on the link for the Braves broadcast pops open a small Internet Explorer window (200x75 pixels?). Host not responding. Back in a few minutes, and this time the window loads the Real Player widgets. Inexpicably, the audio is not set to autoplay. Also, it looks like there is supposed to be a scoreboard applet, but it doesn’t load in my window. I push play, and everything works fine, though the audio quality is unimpressive. Last year, the Padres’ audio feed was nearly FM quality on most days, but this is sub-AM quality. This particular radio feed may be an AM broadcast which would explain some of the degraded quality, and the RealNetworks network is probably being hammered on opening day, so hopefully things will improve.
So now I have 1.5 hours to kill before the first pitch of the Padres game. Even Real Networks’ shenanigans can’t squelch my excitement. This is one of the happiest days of the year.
