MAJOR BLOGS - www.majorblogs.net - Las Vegas, Nev. - 12.09.08 - National Association of Professional Baseball Leagus (NA) president Pat O’Conner announced that the organization had finally reached an agreement with Baseball Advanced Media (BAM) to become the exclusive provider of individual team websites under a collective entity called the Baseball Internet Rights Company (BIRCO) today at the opening session of the Minor League Baseball Winter Meetings.

O’Conner’s announcement may have been premature. There were still more than a dozen teams that were not on board for the ride, who still were refusing to sign the BIRCO contract with the blank Schedule A that indicated how clubs were to be compensated for their websites.

IL President Randy Mobley said the NA was working towards a deal appeasing the dissenters, and, as is often the case, did not look to the downside of their rejection of the deal again as a possibility.

“We got an amendment in the package being considered here,” said Mobley. “We may leave with everybody involved. Short of that, I don’t know just what the plan will be. We may leave here hopefully with everybody involved, and that will be a moot point.”

Mobley noted the advantages of scale in the reasons to join BIRCO.

“I think in a lot of this we are arguing or debating hypotheticals so nobody has hard or fast answers,” said Mobley. “The concept is that again, if we can bundle everybody together, the value is greater, the value in the marketplace, whether it be the sale of advertising, the number of hits that you’re going to get, the number of views you are going to get with Major League Baseball’s distribution. So it’s just all being part of one thing. Are you better off all being together without being somewhat splintered? Even though splintering maybe only one percent of the clubs, you would like to think you’re better having 100 percent of them pulling in the same direction.”

With MLB pushing for the deal, resistance may be futile. The NA is using the meeting to make the final push to bring those unhappy with the previous deal on board. Will BIRCO be ratified?

“Here over the next couple of days, we’ll find out if we got that or not,” said Mobley.

 - Christopher HADORN