MLB  |  Google Cloud (2024)

The Solution

Creating a smarter way for fans to jump into the action

Advanced data analytics are crucial to an organization’s ability to respond to change and thrive. Yet many businesses aren’t getting actionable insights from their data. That's where Google Cloud comes in. Built on a culture of openness, data-driven decisions, and cost predictability, Google Cloud offers MLB innovation to drive growth with fans, now and in the future.

Migrating toward innovation and a new fan experience

These innovations support the development and evolution of tools like Statcast. Statcast is a state-of-the-art tracking technology that allows for the collection and analysis of a massive amount of baseball data in real time across all 30 ballparks. By upgrading Statcast with Google Cloud’s data capabilities, Statcast has shown significant accuracy improvements in pitch, hit, player tracking, and pose-tracking capabilities open up exciting new ways for fans to more deeply understand what’s happening in real time with AI-powered insights. In 2023, MLB introduced another upgrade to the Statcast platform, replacing 5 of the 12 Hawk-Eye cameras with high frame rate cameras, opening the door for new insights to be gleaned via bat and biomechanics tracking output, and we’ll continue to work together to identify new stats and ways to deliver this information to the fans.

Real-time personalized fan experiences have been at the forefront of this partnership for MLB, including leveraging Google Cloud’s AI offerings and expertise, and exploring further ways to integrate technology into improving the fan experience at home, or in the ballpark.

With migration to Google Cloud, MLB enhanced performance of their inhouse video search and content creation applications, enabling MLB to launch Film Room. Film Room is MLB’s highlight clip platform on MLB.com, giving fans access to search over 3.5 million clips by player, team, or play dating back to 1929. Fans and media are able to search and view highlights personalized to their queries in real-time, powered by Google Cloud AI and Search.

Keeping up the momentum created by data-driven rule changes.

Data played a huge role in baseball’s resurgence last year, helping inform MLB to make rule changes that made the game faster, more exciting, and more engaging for fans. With the assistance of cloud computing, advanced video, and wireless sensors, there is more data, and more types of data, available than ever before, all of which were critical to the introduction of the new rules—a pitch clock, bigger bases, and a ban on defensive shifts.

How much did the game change? Let’s take a look at stats in particular that stood out:

- Games were 24 minutes shorter

- Stolen base attempts rose 50% per game, from 1.2 to 1.8, with a 4% increase in success rate

- Batting averages increased from .243 to .249 on average

- Runs averaged 9.2 per game, compared to 8.6 the previous season

- Attendance was even up, reaching more than 70 million fans across the league, a first since 2017

As we head into the second season with the new rules, there’s never been more excitement on the field, or in the stands. Excitement that’s enhanced at every level by data and AI on the cloud.