An Annual Rite Of Spring: The New At Bat App

NEW YORK, Feb. 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- It's here. Today is a date millions of baseball fans have circled each year. The beginning of Spring Training games also marks the debut of a new MLB.com At Bat – the highest-grossing sports app five years running – as made available by MLBAM across iPhone, iPad, supported Android smartphones and tablets, Amazon Kindle Fire and BlackBerry 10. A Windows Phone 8 version of At Bat is expected to be available in March.

MLB.com At Bat, which has been available since it became one of the original 500 apps to launch with the Apple App Store on July 10, 2008, was downloaded a record 10 million times in 2013 (+45% YOY).

MOBILE EXPERIENCE PIONEER
Long hailed as the standard bearer for introducing features that matter to fans, At Bat this year will report for live Spring Training games with a full app re-design for iOS 7 on iPhone and iPad, among other new enhancements. Fans again will have access to the core functionality At Bat has pioneered over its first five years, including: personalized team experiences to deliver a linear feed of content for a designated favorite team; searchable libraries of tens of thousands of video-on-demand highlight clips; and customizable original news reporting and fantasy baseball analysis from MLB.com club beat reporters and national columnists.

THE FOREFRONT OF MOBILE VIDEO
Since it became the first app to stream live video in 2009, At Bat has introduced an evolving set of ways for its millions of subscribers to consume live baseball games. Beginning on Opening Day, MLBAM again will provide blackout free live look-ins, in-game highlights delivered to At Bat in less than 60 seconds, the free MLB.TV Game of the Day, live statistical overlays such as pitch tracking and an archive of Classic Games. New video-driven features being built by MLBAM for 2014 will be announced at a later date.

CROSS-PLATFORM ACCESSIBILITY
For the third year, MLB.TV Premium subscribers again will receive At Bat 14 for free, unlocking the app's premium feature set. Fans also may subscribe to MLB.com At Bat 14 for the one-time annual fee of $19.99, covering the entire season. iOS users may pay $2.99/month with the recurring billing offering.

With an At Bat 14 subscription, users will have multi-platform live audio access for portability to take home, away and Spanish-language audio feeds to desktop and laptop computers. Subscribers also will be able to get full premium feature access across all support iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.

SPRING TRAINING FEATURES (At Bat Opening Day update coming in March)

• Watch more than 200 Spring Training games live with a MLB.TV Premium subscription (iPhone, iPad, select Android phones & tablets, Kindle Fire, BlackBerry 10)
• Listen live to all available Spring Training radio broadcasts (all)
• Track league-wide scoreboards and batter-by-batter action for every Spring Training game (all)
• Breaking news, schedules and interactive rosters and players stats for every team (all)
• Full-season schedule calendars (all)

At Bat is the official application of Major League Baseball. For more information, visit MLB.com.

SOURCE MLBAM