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Streaming Sports Is the Future, and the Present: MLB Media's Bob Bowman at Code/Media

Plus, he hinted at aspirations to take on TV sports giant ESPN.

Asa Mathat for Vox Media
Peter Kafka covers media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.

You can stream big-time sports events like the Super Bowl, over the Web, right now, and it can work pretty well.

But Bob Bowman, who runs pro baseball’s MLB Advanced Media unit, says that the Web isn’t going to replace TV for sports anytime soon, at least not for games with really big audiences. The tech just isn’t there.

If that sounds contradictory for a guy whose company makes money streaming sports, as well as other Web video services like HBO Now, it isn’t.

But better to hear Bowman explain it himself, in this Code/Media interview with Walt Mossberg. Bowman also provided an update on his plans to spin out the tech service from MLBAM as a standalone company, and hinted at aspirations to take on TV sports giant ESPN.

You can see the entire interview here:

And here’s an audio version:

For more audio from Code/Media 2016 and all our other events, subscribe to Re/code Replay on iTunes.

What’s that? You want even more Code/Media content? Done: Here’s a YouTube playlist of more video from Code/Media 2016.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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