With more and more fans turning to mobile devices to consume sports content, Major League Baseball has announced that it will partner with Denver's Flexential to improve its digital experience.
A 2018 Google study showed that 80 percent of sports fans use a computer or smartphone while watching live sports on TV to search for player stats or scores, and 30 percent of fans live stream sporting events to their smartphones or tablets.
As the league makes a push to digital, Flexential, a provider of data centers and hybrid IT solutions, will serve as a western hub to complement the MLB's east coast operations and improve its digital products.
"We always strive to deliver our fans uninterrupted, high-quality access to MLB content at every step of their consumption experiences," said Truman Boyes, MLB senior VP, infrastructure, in a statement. "To meet these expectations requires a data management system with highly reliable, scalable and proximity-based data centers. Flexential was able to respond to our needs in record time with an environmentally-responsible infrastructure to support us as we serve our clubs and their fans."
Flexential's Denver-Englewood data center will help the MLB reduce its latency by more than half, enhancing the league's digital products' performance and availability.
"With the number of active internet-connected devices expected to grow to 20 billion by next year, the soaring bandwidth and network demands will also explode. MLB's example of taking the connectivity to the Edge is proof you can overcome those obstacles to provide the seamless user experience every baseball fan wants," said Chris Downie, Flexential CEO, in a statement.
