Baseball Quick, LLC v. MLB Advanced Media. L.P. et al

Filing 77

DECLARATION of Matthew D. Murphey in Support re: 63 MOTION Relief Pursuant to Rule 56(d) re: 55 MOTION for Summary Judgment... Document filed by Baseball Quick, LLC. (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit Ex. A, # 2 Exhibit Ex. B, # 3 Exhibit Ex. C, # 4 Exhibit Ex. D, # 5 Exhibit Ex. E, # 6 Exhibit Ex. F, # 7 Exhibit Ex. G)(Murphey, Matthew)

Exhibit C

At Home Plate - MLB.TV angering premium subscribers

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Friday, August 12, 2011
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MLB.TV angering premium subscribers
Written by Bjoern Hartig (Contact & Archive) on June 10, 2009

MLB.TV is Major League Baseball's online service that offers live streams and archives of all games
over the internet, available as a regular and a premium service. The premium subscripers get highdefinition resolution and a special game summary called condensed games that only show the final
pitch of every at-bat, allowing baseball fans with time contrains and abroad to keep track of their
favorite teams and players. Or so they thought.

0

After sustaining a few weeks without any condensed games at all to start the season, the 15-25 minute long
condensed games - now also available to non-subscribers for free - were changed to a new format at the end of
May. Then, the summaries changed into extended highlight reels between five and eight minutes long, showing
only selected at-bats - usually run-scoring plays or strike-outs - often skipping several innings completely and
being generally perceived as rather confusing. MLB.com claims that change was made because of customers
complaining about condensed games being too long, but some people suspect it had more to do with a new
application for iPhone users that was launched recently. Customers have voiced their dissatisfaction in a thread
in the mlb.tv support forum that extends over several pages (and that apparently had to be edited to remove
additional pages worth of explicit comments), but have yet to receive any substantial feedback about if or when
the format will be changed back or even whether their criticism has been acknowledged by MLB.
Considering that premium subscribers had paid about $110 for this year's service and that MLB would probably
like them to renew their subscription for about $90, this behavior by MLB is rather puzzling. Leaving the
question of alienating of your most loyal fan base aside for a moment, I have to wonder if there really is more
money in iPhone users paying $9.99 for an app than in subscribers spending nearly ten times as much on a yearly
basis?
Recommend article:

BallHype:

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8/12/2011

At Home Plate - MLB.TV angering premium subscribers

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Comments (5)
Amen

1. Thursday, 11 June 2009 01:42
(Tom)
This is just completely ridiculous of them, especially to not even have the decency to say anything about it in
response to the hundreds upon hundreds of complaints (which doesn't look so bad after they remove half of
them...)
Unbelievable
2. Thursday, 11 June 2009 08:23
(Tim)
Condensed games are a feature that was advertised for all subscribers, standard _and_ premium.
I am a subscriber myself and I am outraged by what MLB.TV is doing to its customers. They constantly kept
changing the product during this season, the condensed game feature being the worst fiasco of all. There is a
complete lack of communication from MLB.TV, they started the season by closing their blog, what else can you
say. They're doing the best to alienate their overseas fan base, as MLB.TV is the only option for fans in Europe
to keep in touch with everyday baseball action. A potentially great product, badly managed. To quote a post on
the MLB.TV forum: epic fail...
Barking at the moon
3. Thursday, 11 June 2009 08:42
(Dave)
That's what MLB.TV customers feel like we have been doing. No response from the powers that be at all. This is
the email response I got when I email the subscription customer sewrviceResponse (Raphael) - 06/06/2009 09:31 PM
Dear Dave Clements:
Thank you for sending your email.
I apologize for the difficulty experienced. Please call our Customer Support department at 1-866-800-1275 so we
can do some troubleshooting and improve your experience.
Your tracking number is 7252212.
Thank you for taking the time to write.
Regards,
MLB.com Support
Troubleshooting? Oh, I'm sure it must be my system...
Finally they listened

4. Saturday, 13 June 2009 07:20
(Tim)

http://www.athomeplate.com/blog-posts/mlb.tv-angering-premium-subscribers.html

8/12/2011

At Home Plate - MLB.TV angering premium subscribers

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As a reaction to their angry customers, MLB.Tv returned to the old condensed games format. This is really good
news...
Absolutely
5. Sunday, 14 June 2009 11:47
(BJ)
I'm so glad they are back. I still say MLB should have handled that situation better, but at least they "got it right",
so to speak.

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