Phillies

Major League Baseball Enters the 21st Century with Jomboy Deal

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jun 10th, 2025 · 11:42 AM EDT

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Eric Fisher at Front Office Sports writes that Major League Baseball acquired a minority stake in Jomboy Media:

The equity deal sees the league looking to extend its presence among baseball content creators, and the agreement will involve Jomboy Media gaining access to league and team IP, participating in merchandise and sponsorship collaborations, and having a presence for some of its content on league platforms.

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‘We think having a strong content creator community is important for baseball,” MLB EVP of media and business development Kenny Gersh tells Front Office Sports. ‘Having people out there with an authentic voice talking about baseball is good for us, and we want to support that where we can, encourage that, and in this case, invest in it. … A big part of this is getting them in front of more baseball fans than they already are.’

Ding ding ding! Thank you, Kenny Gersh. That quote should be plastered on the walls of every press office from here to California, photocopies sent to every stick-up-their ass league or team employee.

Major League Baseball has been notoriously resistant to new media, and used to send out cease and desist letters with more frequency than the Phillies chasing pitches outside of the zone. They didn’t believe in blogs and social media and content creators because they wanted control over their intellectual property, which, while understandable, was stunting organic growth, especially among young kids. You had the NBA out here allowing independent fans and media to use their highlights and make their own clips, which resulted in this huge groundswell of popularity and accessibility while MLB officials did whatever they could to stifle the inevitable transition. Now they finally are realizing that, “well golly gee! maybe it’s a good thing if young people are talking about our sport and our players and circulating our highlights.”

Honestly, I think Maestro nails it in this tweet, which I’ve truncated:

What Major League Baseball is doing is very smart. As a blogger running Crossing Broad 10-15 years ago, we were on the receiving end of numerous cease and desists and takedown requests, largely from posting clips of game film to online video platforms like YouTube, Vimeo and Twitter. We were far from alone, and MLB policed use of its content with a short-sighted view of trying to get all online video views of MLB property to its own website.

What happened was that the NBA, in particular, exploded in popularity as it embraced the web and allowed fans (especially young ones) to upload, edit and share clips from its games. This was how people were increasingly consuming sports and the NBA benefitted from not filing copyright claims every time someone shared a dunk, because they knew it would good for long-term interest in the brand. It took MLB a while, but they got there sometime this decade, and are now fully-embracing a fun, long-term, fan-centric view of the game…

The death of baseball was largely exaggerated, as you well know. It has always been big in Philadelphia and through the northeast corridor, it was just a situation where Major League Baseball was marketed poorly and run by people who didn’t understand the value of non-traditional media.

The only downside in all of this, other than Jomboy being a Yankees fan, is if punches start to be pulled. Are they going to rip the umps now? You look through a lot of the replies on various news stories about this and people think it’s an MLB ploy to take control. We will find out, for instance, if some PR flak asks them to not lip read F bombs. For what it’s worth, it’s written that “the agreement includes no editorial control or oversight by MLB,” but there’s always someone texting you about something, speaking from personal experience.

Otherwise, it makes a ton of sense, and we welcome MLB into the 21st Century.