Why Major League Baseball dumped Microsoft's Silverlight

Paul Boutin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:10:41 -0400

This week's start of the 2009 baseball season will leave Microsoft out of the game: MLB.com management decided to abandon its year-long use of Microsoft Silverlight and instead stream games through Adobe's Flash player, the technology used by YouTube.

A CNET report claims there were multiple reasons for the decision:

Sources close to the negotiations between the league and Microsoft said it was a series of glitches and conflicts between the companies that led to the split.

First, baseball wanted Microsoft to make it possible for users to download Silverlight without having to possess administrative rights. When people are at work, it's often the company that possesses those rights and employees would need authorization to download the player. That frustrated plenty of MLB.com subscribers, according to the sources.

The other major issue was that baseball considered Silverlight too unstable. There were some high-profile glitches, including last year's opening day, which saw many MLB.com subscribers struggling to log in and others who were unable to watch games. The malfunctions lasted several days.

A separate report by Engadget lists the advanced video features in MLB's flash player:

Beyond pausing and rewinding live games as you can with a DVR, subscribers can watch up to four games at a time with "mosaic" picture-in-picture; select different audio channels, including synced-up radio commentary streams; and follow their favorite players (or fantasy team) as they play their games, including live video peeks. Nothing [else on the Internet] comes close.

Despite recent improvements to Silverlight, it seems less and less likely that Silverlight will pose a threat to Flash. Most recently, Microsoft's beta release of the Windows 7 operating system does not bundle Silverlight as a plug-in for the company's Internet Explorer browser. Instead, users must download and install it through the Windows Update service. By the time Microsoft's player is available by default to most Windows users, Flash may have already won the game.

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Why Major League Baseball dumped Microsoft's Silverlight