Is lack of a salary cap undermining interest in MLB?

There was an eye-opening Harris Poll released last week that said interest in Major League Baseball has slipped to 35 percent among adults who say they follow the game, down from last year’s 41 percent.

While it’s tempting to say it’s only one poll, or it’s only a one-year anomaly – because we’re in an era of short-attention-span theater, a recession or have so much fighting for our entertainment dollar – but what if it isn’t?

Is it possible that the lack of a salary cap is finally catching up to baseball? Many fans have long decried the lack of a cap, the disparity it engenders between big-market and small-market teams. The behemoths of the game, led by the Yankees, Red Sox, Philles and Mets, can hoard the best players because they can afford them.

It leaves large swaths of the league competitively irrelevant (did you know the Pirates have had 17 straight losing seasons?) and while some of those teams are simply poorly run, baseball’s lack of institutionalized parity plays a big role. The NFL is the best example of how the salary cap improves the health of a league overall. Small-market teams like Green Bay can be perennial contenders, something MLB's Pirates or Royals can never aspire to.

Digitizing video assets can unlock many Vaults

A little more than a week from now, Selection Sunday will kick start the NCAA Tournament, unlocking passions from coast to coast, but by unlocking The Vault on Wednesday, the NCAA hopes it got an early start.

The Vault is a good example of a significant digital asset -- in this case, a treasure trove of video from NCAA Tournament games dating back to 2000 -- that existed but went untapped until the NCAA decided to take a chance at monetizing it. Almost every organization has video assets, but because digitizing it for online use is expensive, the key is developing a digital strategy and exploiting that use.

In the case of the NCAA, even though the video is limited to games from the Round of 16 and forward, The Vault is a gold mine for fans. The games can be sliced and diced and shared on Twitter, Facebook or simply emailed.

“The old idea in the industry was to protect the archive and drive fans to the broadcasts,” Gregg Winik of CineSport told the New York Times. “Now, people are saying, ‘Internet video is a real business.’ ”