Streaming sports not expected to replace TV soon

DANA POINT, Calif. Don’t look for streaming to replace televised sports any time soon.

Appearing at the Code/Media conference here, Bob Bowman, president of media for Major League Baseball, said television is better positioned to handle the mass audiences on a consistent basis.

“Eventually the hardware can distribute 10 million streams,” he said. But for now, “It would be really hard to do it. You could do it once a week, but the cost to do it would be so expensive.”

To make it work now, Bowman said, Netflix would have to take the night off, and other high-traffic streaming would also have to take a siesta.

While this year’s Super Bowl brought in 112 million viewers, a recent stream of a Thursday NFL game on Yahoo saw just over 2 million viewers.

MLB is more than just baseball--it also provides the streaming technology for HBO and National Hockey League. But some 80% of the business comes from baseball--today.

Bowman said he’s hoping to reach out to more non-baseball clients as well.

How big can working with third parties get?

“Billions and billions,” Bowman said. “That’s why we’re doing this.”

Follow USA TODAY tech columnist Jefferson Graham on Twitter, @jeffersongraham.